Habithash...tag

Meaning the huge habitat hashtag twitter fiasco. The basics of this “huge story” that “rocked the nation” was that those commercially-minded folks down at Habitat UK (which automatically makes them evil according to some reports I have read) fooled Twitter followers into viewing their tweets by inserting hashtags (keywords) so that the tweets would feature highly in the “trending topics” (a list of current hot topics).

Now Habitat clearly went about it in the wrong way and the tweets were just sales promotions about “20% off summer range” with “ipod” or “Iran elections” inserted randomly which has angered some, well a lot of, Twitter users. No doubt we will be hearing about this faux pas in social media talks and conferences until the cows come home but it did make me think two things immediately which were:

1. They went about it all wrong, that is not in dispute, but what if they were making an actual comment on the current affairs issue? Would their comments or tweets be less valuable to other users because they are an organisation rather than an individual? Would the public like to know the opinions of organisations where they spend their cash? And if so could this be used to the benefit of the organisation (like Benetton, crap clothes but they stood for something = enough money to run a F1 team).


3. Apparently the offending employee at Habitat who came up with the idea was an intern. No, my final idea was not actually why were they letting an intern loose on the company Twitter account, but what advert did they use to get the intern. Was it Twit wanted? Summer twit positions available? Want to be twit? How about a twit internship??