Microsoft apologizes for 'crass' Amy Winehouse tweet

via Twitter

Two hours after encouraging Amy Winehouse fans to remember the recently deceased singer by downloading her "ground-breaking 'Back to Black' for Zune," TweetBox360, the official PR Twitter account for XBox360 UK started spitting out the "my bads!"

"Apologies to everyone if our earlier Amy Winehouse 'download' tweet seemed purely commercially motivated. Far from the case, we assure you," read the first tweet, quickly followed by a second. "With Amy W's passing, the world has lost a huge talent. Our thoughts are with Amy's family and friends at this very sad time."

via Twitter

"Classy." "Crass much?" and "Cheap" are how three Twitter users economized their disgust in 140 characters or less. There are many, many more.

"@tweetbox360 In poor taste, 'nice' job on cashing in on a celebrity's death @xboxshould reconsider their relationship with you," tweeted one outraged Twitter user. Notably, many ignored the ripe opportunity to make the obligatory Zune jokes. Others noted that Microsoft wasn't alone in its cryptic commercialization and pointed to the "Remembering Amy" advertisement over at Apple's iTunes store. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

via Twitter

The Microsoft Xbox Amy Winehouse gaffe isn't the first tasteless adver-tweet from a major company, and as this trend reveals an inability for big business to learn from each other's mistakes, it's far from the last.

Kenneth Cole remains the king of the tacky tweet. As you may recall, the American fashion designerexploited the deadly riots in Egypt last February by co-opting the trending hashtag #Cairo (used for discussing the riots in Egypt on Twitter) to promote his new spring line.

via Twitter

Entenmann's, your favorite brand of fresh-baked goods since 1898, took home the Kenneth Cole Award for Tasteless Tweets earlier this month when it equated eating fresh-baked goods with murdering a child following the "not guilty" verdict in the Casey Anthony trial.

As the #notguilty hashtag climbed to the top of U.S. Twitter trends, @Entenmanns tweeted "Who's #notguilty about eating all the tasty treats they want?"

That sentiment quickly reached retweet goodness — though it resulted in more bemusement than outrage — and Entenmann's soon issued an apolo-tweet: "Sorry everyone, we weren't trying to reference the trial in our tweet! We should have checked the trending hashtag first."

As we continue to hold Twitter vigil, waiting to write this inevitable story: "Congressman tweets inappropriate comment, starts meme in response to debt ceiling agreement," remember, tasteless adver-tweets capitalizing on trending topics are all around us.

via The Telegraph 

More on the annoying way we live :

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about the Internet. Tell her to get a real job on Twitter and/or Facebook.  Also, Google+.

View the original article here