The Twitter account used to promote Microsoft’s Bing search engine went slightly bonkers Monday afternoon, posting a deluge of pre-Oscar party photos.
The photo blitz lasted an hour or two on Monday afternoon, during which Bing’s 91,000 Twitter followers were bombarded with links to photos taken at a Saturday Night Los Angeles Confidential magazine party that was sponsored by Bing.
“At the LA Confidential party presented by @Bing,” Microsoft said in Twitter message after Twitter message.
The souvenir pictures show partygoers posing in front of a white background and are doctored to look like a Los Angeles Confidential magazine cover.
They weren’t very popular on Twitter, where the reaction was instant and unforgiving. “@bing read my lips: I hate #SPAM !!!!!!!,” wrote one follower. “@bing Nice spam, instant unfollow,” wrote another.
Microsoft didn’t seem to know exactly what happened, but a spokeswoman said Monday that the account was not hacked. “It was not our intention to flood the Twitter feed, we have remedied the situation and apologize for the inconvenience,” she said via e-mail.
Microsoft removed the offending Tweets and apologized to followers around 4 p.m. Pacific Time. However, many of the party pictures were still visible on Bing’s TwitPic account.
The Bing-sponsored party was held for Jesse Eisenberg, who was nominated for his starring role in “The Social Network,” a movie about Facebook.
(Klaus Junginger with IDG News Group Brazil contributed to this story.)
Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert’s e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com