Chipotle on Wednesday admitted that last week’s barrage of odd tweets from its Twitter account was not hacked, but was done deliberately by the company itself.
Mashable’s Seth Fiegerman reported that the company faked the compromised account to mark its 20th anniversary.
“We thought that people would pay attention, that it would cut through people’s attention and make them talk, and it did that,” Chris Arnold, a Chipotle representative, told Mashable.
He added: “It was definitely thought out: We didn’t want it to be harmful or hateful or controversial.”
The Twitter account added more than 4,000 last Saturday when it started posting messages like “twitter.” and requested followers--in poor grammar--to send it guacamole.
Those tweets--including “Mittens13 password leave“ and ”hit send too soon!”--have not been deleted.
Eventually after around an hour of odd tweets, the manager of Chipotle’s account, Joe Stupp, wrote: “Sorry all. We had a little problem with our account. But everything is back on track now! – Joe.”
