Yesterday, after a very ominous silence over the last two months, the HabitatUK Twitter account bounced back into action. And I was impressed with how they were handling the whole #Hashtag debacle. It wasn't until the end of the day I found out that Lewis from Shiny Red had been manning the account all day. Now, for the benefit of full disclosure, I do know Lewis, but I don't think that has a bearing on this blog post. Nice bloke though.
For those of you who aren't aware of the Habitat UK Twittergate, they used the trending topics hashtags to draw attention to their items. Which meant that rather tackily, a link to a clock (for example) was tagged with #iran pushing it higher up the search terms - not very clever. And pretty crass actually.
Put simply: They fucked up.
An intern was apparently behind the account and everything went very quiet. But now they're back. And they fully admit that they made a gigantic mistake, and they're trying to rectify things. Getting someone who knows what they're doing in to help them is no bad thing. Some companies aren't as effective in social media as others. By the sounds of it Habitat are a bit clueless in that department so why not get someone to help them?
As I blog about interiors, Habitat are on my radar. 99% of interiors companies are actually - especially the big ones. A couple of weeks ago, Ikea managed to royally mess up their PR when it came to bloggers. We weren't impressed and it's left a sour taste in our mouths to be honest. Now, I'm not a huge fan of Ikea to start with - Domestic Sluttery isn't about simple white furniture and their website is a nightmare to trawl through.
I was annoyed at Ikea, and understandably people are annoyed at Habitat. But sometimes companies do stupid things. People do stupid things! I'm a writer. I do stupid things ALL THE TIME. Email me and I'll tell you about them.
People aren't quick to forgive. In fact, some people haven't shut up about it since they reappeared. And it's not only dull, it's pointless. Because the company are trying to do something right. Everyone fucks up. I'm guessing Daren Forsyth has on many occasion. I'm not convinced that this witch hunt is worthwhile (that's my choice of words no his - apparently it's my perception of things). I agree entirely that Habitat need to look into their intern program, but in my opinion, that's true of any large company.
I'm guessing heads did roll at Habitat. Bringing the brand of a company into question and damaging their reputation isn't something that people are going to take lightly. I don't believe for a second that the intern just got a slap on the wrist at was sent on their way. This was pretty serious and the damage may have been irreparable to some customers. But it was a mistake. One that Habitat are actually doing their best to repair.
Using Twitter isn't automatically obvious. I piss people off, don't reply to others and accidentally spam people. Because I'm human. So was the person behind Habitat. I'd rather that than them getting a computer to do everything for them. Sure, the first time they tried this they messed up. Really messed up. But you know what? They could have just skulked off and never returned.
But they're back, and they're attempting to do things right. They might never repair the damage completely, but jeez, give them a chance. Because people fuck up. And most of the time that's what makes them interesting.
Why it's time to give Habitat a break
Posted by
Siany
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Labels: Domestic Sluttery , habitat , media , oops , opinated much , twitter
7 comments:
Hi Siany,
Interesting read - I am new to Twitter myself, thus working out how to engage with anyone at all was Hurdle #1, then codes of practice on top of that isn't something that's written in the Twitter Help section.
Bad idea yes. Feasible genuine mistake - probably. I think people think using social media is so easy and informal, thus it's impact must be small. The kind of thing you might let interns do, without any real supervision or direction. Not taking it seriously is the real error here.
Sarika
I think it's a lack of understanding that people aren't willing to accept.
Because Habitat are a large company, you expect them to know how to do stuff like this. But a lot of the more traditional companies caught on late to social media - some large interiors companies are nowhere near using Twitter. Just because they're a large company, that doesn't mean that this comes naturally to them. Not every company is media savvy.
The issue with Habitat isn't really about the fuck up involving inappropriate Twitter usage.
The real issue - and the one people are actually interested in - is about people management.
All I know is that I don't really care about the mistakes Habitat made in using Twitter - I care about the fact they didn't train their intern properly and then fired them when the intern made a mistake.
So really, we're arguing the same point - when ppl fuck up, DON'T FIRE THEM / ABUSE THEM for it, let them learn, rectify and move onwards and upwards.
Dom (from @Internocracy)
I'm not convinced to be honest. If this incident was within normal parameters of social media fuckups, I'd probably be able to think of many other similarly grotesque incidents - but I can't. This one was an outlier.
Also, social media aside, I question the management style of a company that would publicly blame a junior staff member such as an intern. Maybe an intern did fuck up - but a responsible management structure would assign responsibility to the decision-maker who enabled the fuckup, not to the intern.
Dom, I agree with you and in that case I think we're arguing the same point. But I think there's a lot of badgering Habitat in a public forum - I'm not sure that achieves anything.
Training interns and really giving to opportunity to get an understanding of the company they're working for is so important and it should be taken seriously - more seriously than perhaps Habitat took it in this instance.
Hi All,
I'm working with HabitatUK to help get their Twitter account up and running again, and you can see my blog post about social media and second chances here: http://www.shinyred.tv/1668/social-media-and-second-chances/
Regarding the intern, we have answered questions where possible in a bid to be as transparent as possible. You have all agreed that the most important thing here is the people, and their careers and personal lives. Twitter is a public forum, and having confidential HR information on specific individuals from Habitat published on a Twitter account is neither possible nor ethical.
You can see the response below and also at this link: http://twitter.com/HabitatUK/status/4007173153
"We can’t give away information on specific people, it’s important to preserve their privacy, but we can confirm we parted on good terms and wish them every future success. Like many of our interns they have returned to full-time education and we feel this should not damage their career path. We think it is important that they are allowed to continue their education and career without this hanging over them."
Thanks for commenting, Lewis. Hope to see Habitat continue tweeting once you've shown them how it's done!
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