The Montreal Canadiens logo appears on skate protectors.(Photo: Greg M. Cooper, USA TODAY Sports)
In an effort to salute gaining their one millionth Twitter follower and reward fans for their loyalty, the Montreal Canadiens learned a hard lesson about social media management.
On Tuesday evening, the Canadiens’ Twitter sent out a number of tweets, including photos of customized jerseys containing user handles and various other celebratory messages, to fans with highly offensive account names.
Several automated missives directed at users with derogatory titles were fired from the account before the Canadiens finally stepped in and started trying to take them down (screenshots of examples can be found on Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur’s timeline). Several players, including P.K. Subban and Max Pacioretty, made videos previously that were automatically attached to certain tweets containing the offensive terms, thanking the fans for their support of the organization.
The use of an automated script in situations like this one, when an account is approaching a milestone number and uses a hashtag (#CanadiensMTL1M) to track respondents for when it reaches it, is…