If you were using Twitter yesterday then you would no doubt have read about how UK Furniture store Habitat generated a major backlash from the Twitter community.

The whole thing started a few days ago when Tiphereth Gloria from Digitial Tip noticed that Habitat were attaching the latest Twitter Trends hash tags to promotion links they were sending out. They used the terms #iphone, #apple and they even used #iran to capitalize on the current situation in Iran, something which really brought them some unwanted bad press.

According to Digital Tip, they didn’t apologise to followers or try to make amends in any way, they simply deleted the tweets that people had complained about.

During this time they were prepearing their PR reply :

I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.

Claire
Habitat Head Office
London

Habitat seemed to have totally distanced themselves from this whole thing and looked for a scapegoat. They have really messed up but I have to agree with Digital Tip that most people would have been happier if they just put their hands up, said sorry and admitted that they messed up.

This is a classic example of what happens when a company lets someone with no experience with social media look after their social media promotion.

Many Twitter users do not like to have affiliate links sent to them via Twitter. I myself have unsubscribed from many users who constantly promote products they apparently love, but then proceed to link to the product with an affiliate link!

However, some people don’t mind being pushed good offers via Twitter and others actually invite it. Darren Rowse has decided to capitalize on this by launching his own dedicated promotions accounts at Twitter. He still tweets from his personal twitter account however he will now inform readers of good deals and offers through the account @ProBloggerDeals.

Darren is not someone to take his readers for granted and has fully explained what people can expect from following the new account :

@ProBloggerDeals is unashamedly an account for promotional Tweets. If you’re offended by people pitching you products or services (at discounts) – it’s probably not an account for you to follow (and I take no offense at that – this won’t be for everyone).

I have no doubt that other successful websites have follow suit and create a dedicated offers account for their readers.

Link : ProBloggerDeals

“How is Twitter going to make money?” – This is the question which seems to crop up again and again online. The latest suggestion comes from Todd Chaffee, an Institutional Venture Partners VC and Twitter board member, who suggested that Twitter may let businesses send branded direct messages.

He told the New York Times :

Commerce-based search businesses monetise extremely well, and if someone says, ‘What treadmill should I buy?’ you as the treadmill company want to be there. As people use Twitter to get trusted recommendations from friends and followers on what to buy, e-commerce navigation and payments will certainly play a role in Twitter monetisation.

I’m not sure how this would work but it doesn’t sound like something which I think would prove to be popular and it’s something which I think could be very easily abused. It doesn’t seem like any of this matters anyways as Twitters top man Evan Williams quickly responded to these suggestions :

Todd is not actually on Twitter’s board and, is brainstorming on his own. These are not in the least bit concrete plans of the company.

I found it a little strange that someone at a venture capital company would claim to be on the board of Twitter and no the ins and outs of a new business model. Seems like any mention of the word Twitter nowadays will get you the attention of a lot of news agencies!

Link : Twitter to make cash from branded direct messages

I spoke recently about how useful I find Trending Topics on Twitter. It’s a great place to find out about the latest news.

News is something which Twitter obviously takes seriously, as was illustrated this week with their recent rescheduling around the Iran Election Protest. Which is why is it was no surprise to read yesterday that Twitter are censoring their Twitter Trends area and removing inappropriate search results (spam/sex related).

It’s a good move from their part though if you want to see the true unmodified search results, you can always check the results from a Twitter portal, where the results won’t have been edited.