Vodafone found out how easy it is to get Twitter wrong this week when a homophobic message was sent out from its @VodafoneUK account. The offending message can be read here.

Observers initially thought Vodafone’s Twitter account had been hacked but Vodafone quickly issued a statement explaining that one of its employees was responsible:

This afternoon an employee posted an obscene message from the official Vodafone UK Twitter profile.

The employee has been suspended immediately and we have started an internal investigation. This was not a hack and we apologise for any offence the tweet may have caused.

Vodafone also used Twitter to send personal apologies to followers which read “We’re really sorry. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us.”

Whether the message was sent on purpose or was mistakenly posted to @VodafoneUK rather than the member of staff’s personal Twitter account has not been revealed.

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