It seems I’m one of the (lucky?) few to have fallen prey to some not-very-subtle promotion from TweetDeck, the Twitter desktop client. Having installed TweetDeck’s innocuous-looking upgrade, I began to notice things going horribly wrong.
Firstly, TweetDeck’s traditional ‘chirp’ notification was replaced with a clanging guitar chord. Secondly, the sober design was now a garish pink and black – peppered with Blink-182 logos and links to the band’s website.
My attempts to restore TweetDeck’s erstwhile subtlety failed, but a quick Google search proved I wasn’t alone. With Twitter hard selling universally frowned upon, it’s no surprise that people weren’t happy.
However, TweetDeck has since apologised – blaming the issue on a technical glitch, rather than any heavy-handed promotion. This is a great example of managing a crisis, as many of the comments testify.
Humility and honesty are consistent winners when it comes to Twitter. And all too often, this is rule that many have yet to learn.
Equally (if not more) annoying is the way that it now keeps asking me to 'register' for an account, with some frankly lame reasons why it would be useful for me. Yet another username and password to forget? No thanks.
Posted by: Lisa G | July 09, 2009 at 11:07 AM
I've just realised it (kind of) looks like BBC iPlayer, which I've always thought of as a very slick and not remotely garish site.
Point still stands, though!
Posted by: Nadia Saint | July 09, 2009 at 03:24 PM