British furniture store Habitat has been forced to apologise after Twitter users accused it of exploiting the unfolding situation in Iran on the social networking site.
The Iranian election has been one of the most popular subjects written about ('tweeted') in recent days - and so someone at Habitat decided to try and capitalise on that by including words like 'Iran' and 'Mousavi' in messages about special offers, in the hope of driving people towards the store's site.
The idea was that people searching keywords such as 'Iranian election' would then end up seeing incentives to shop at Habitat.
One message, now removed, said 'Mousavi - Join the database for free to win £1000 gift card'.
Twitter users reacted angrily to the tactic - and Habitat have now apologised.
A quick search for 'Habitat' on Twitter now leads to the following messages coming up:
'Unscrupulous Habitat! Shame on them'
'Habitat sorry for Iran Tweeting - sneaky!'
But one user suggests Habitat may not be all that upset about the negative publicity:
'habitat are sorry about spamming twitter; looks like they got the publicity they were after and more.'
Olly Barratt - UK correspondent
