Twitter:
As per Twitter’s own stats it has 175+ million registered users. Impressive number, for a platform that proclaims to be a information network; with small burst of information capped at 140 character length per Tweet.
The number of registered users is a very strong lure for companies to join the ‘Twitter bandwagon’. Today almost every major corporate has its own Twitter account. It’s ‘the place to be’ for customers and retailers alike. While growing popularity of Twitter is a fact; lack of knowledge about how to use this platform is also a fact.
Here’s a perfect case of ‘Mishandling Twitter Account’ by; Habitat is a major Furniture brand based in UK.
Habitat UK Twitter Failure:
Background:
Habitat is a trendy furniture store, based in UK. Habitat Inc. joined Twitter, sometime in June 2009. The company opened its official ‘Twitter account’ for its Habitat store in UK, using the handle HabitatUK. Since the company was a new entrant in the Twitterscape; it needed to make its presence felt.
There are ethical, as well as unethical ways to make your presence felt. 'After all a robber is as well known as a judge'. But hey we all know ethics are tedious to follow. So somebody at Habitat’s Twitter account management team, hit upon a brilliant idea to make their presence felt in the ‘Twitterscape’. Wonderful plan with a minor detail of it being unethical, but that’s just minor.
This plan metamorphosed into a ‘Hashtag scam’. So let’s get a look at what’s #Hashtag & Hashtag scam before we move further.
For those of you who are not so well versed with Twitter, hashtag (#) used to mark topics in a Tweet. Hashtags are used like a catalogue system by Twitter users; to identify tweets about a specific topic. Hashtags acts like ‘keywords’ on twitter and allow users to find all tweets about a particular topic. These "hashtags" help direct users to relevant content when they search for a particular post on any given topic. Hashtags for #Wimbledon for example will direct traffic to tweets to do with the tennis.
e.g: Currently the Marine Vessel (MV) Wisdom, which is marooned at Mumbai sea coast, has been in news quite a bit. The efforts to get that ship going has brought it fair share of limelight. Many Tweeters have mentioned this ship in their tweets. These tweeters are using the hashtag #mvwisdom to tag their tweets. By using this hashtag they are identifying that their tweet is about the particular topic ‘MV wisdom’. Now if you search on Twitter for #mvwisdom, this would list out all post mentioning this hashtag.
Now for a person who has interest in some topic, and he/she is following relevant hashtag for that topic, clicking on a tweet that proclaims to be about this hashtag and reaching a porn site is a shocking experience. This abuse of hashtags is referred to as Hashtag scam.
Using Hashtags of unrelated and irrelevant terms to misdirect internet users to a particular site is an underhand trick employed by "black-hat SMO" exponents. And as the name suggest, this technique is counted amongst the unethical SMO techniques and frowned upon by Social media users and SMO experts alike.
Habitat's Plan:
Habitat UK’s Twitter management team, hit upon the brilliant idea of using hashtags in a interesting fashion to generate interest and popularity about their twitter account. Habitat UK team selected the trending topics hashtags in June 2009 (when Habitat UK launched its twitter account) and incorporated them in their Tweets.
The idea was to popularize the Habitat UK’s twitter account and ensure the company’s messages gets noticed and gains popularity on Twitter.
What went wrong?
Habitat team merely focused on the popularity of the hashtag; they didn’t bother to notice that whether the hashtag was relevant to their business or not. The team used most popular hashtags; and these did not have absolutely anything to do with Habitat, its brand, its product, furniture, decorating, nothing. These hashtags had zero relevance to Habitat, but were obviously the ‘trending topics’ on the day Habitat team used them. Hashtags used were: #iPhone #mms #Apple and even Australia's Masterchef contestant who got voted off #Poh.
Few hashtags were even related to the Iranian protests gaining ground at that time, #Mousavi (relating to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a leading candidate in Iran's presidential elections) and #Iranelection. And these Tweets were urging users to join Habitat’s database. The connection between Iran’s election and Habitat UK’s database is a mystery best left of Habitat’s Twitter management team
Public Reaction:
Needless to say Twitter users were outraged at Habitat for such flagrant spamming tactics and moral insensitivities. Habitat induced the wrath of Twitter users for piggy-backing on popular topics to send spam. Twitter users reacted with anger to the publicity stunt. Heaps of Twitter users took Habitat to task for sending out advertising messages using totally unrelated and in some cases potentially sensitive hashtags like those about Iranian elections (impeding in June 2009)
How Habitat apologized, and how did it manage the damage control from this debacle, will be continued in the second and conclusive part of this article.
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