Well-known high street furniture store Habitat has issued an apology (via its PR company, via a social media blog) for its misuse of popular hashtags on Twitter over the past few days.

Among fair game for whoever was posting on behalf of @TwitterUK were the hashtags #Iran, #iPhone and #Apple – all completely unrelated to any marketing efforts the retail chain was pushing on the service.

The tweets, which unsurprisingly caused quite a backlash from users, have since been removed. read more

Have you searched for comments about you or your blog on Twitter? Have you ever wondered what people are saying about you?

There is a lot you can learn by searching Twitter and monitoring popular keywords and topics. For following trends, it’s invaluable.

How to Track Keywords and Search Terms in Twitter

There are a variety of ways to track what people are saying about you and other topics. Twitscoop tracks the most popular keywords on Twitter, and features a search option. It returns a summary of the latest tweets with those terms. You can click a link to get a chart displaying the frequency and timing of the search term, giving you a visual image of the rise and fall of specific terms on Twitter. read more