Disgruntled Vodafone employee sends obscene tweet

Vodafone UK's twitter account

The problem of have disgruntled service staff controlling your company's Twitter account was painfully realised by Vodafone as a (now former) employee sent a message on the company's official account saying "VodafoneUK is fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver".

Somewhat different to the usual helpful technical tips that most of VodafoneUK's 8,824 followers usually get, the phone company was unsurprisingly contacted to see if they were aware there account had been hacked.

After taking the message off its Twitterfeed, Vodafone issued a grovelling apology to its customers explaining the situation. Replying to each customer individually, Vodafone stated that, "we weren't hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We're very sorry."

Of course, many users had saved the Tweet and posted it online forcing the company to release a press statement.

"An individual posted an obscene remark on the Vodafone UK Twitter account," said a spokesman for the company. "The individual has been suspended pending further notice."

When Twitter goes bad

Vodafone's Twitter faux pas is just the latest  in a line of company/social media gaffs. As more people sign up to Facebook groups and company Twitter feeds, organisations are forced to police official messages much more stringently, however the odd 'rogue' mistake still makes it through now and then.

A year ago Virgin Atlantic sacked 13 cabin crew after they used Facebook to call passengers "chavs" and claimed that the airline's planes were full of cockroaches.

It's enough to make you wonder whether social media feeds are worth the hassle sometimes and whether newsletters/emails were just much easier.

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