A classic case of too little, too soon?

Two days ago, fresh from the recent positive response from its IE10 browser’s marketing campaign, the company perhaps went a little dizzy with confidence when drawing up the plans for Windows Phone 8’s campaign. Given that Windows Phone 8 is very much in its infancy, with very few users, and has a pretty bad reputation from its Windows Phone 7 days (which is a little unfair), it was rather foolhardy for them to go to Twitter to get an ill-advised hashtag to trend.

It began with a simple tweet from the official Windows Phone account to ask Twitter users to share their Android malware horror story. That in itself was rather confusing, since Android users in general face more issues with performance than with malware. Perhaps the tweet was implying the Android Play Store’s lax screening process, or in the bigger picture, the open-sourced nature of the operating system itself. But by then hashtagging #DroidRage and virtually requesting users to get it trending, Microsoft probably stepped over the line, and users were quick to respond.

To their credit, the hashtag may have gotten trending for a while, but not for the reasons the company were looking for. Replies were mostly sarcastic, similar in the style of replies we sometimes see in our forums. GSMarena did unearth a gem, though:

(Source: GSMarena)