Spotify did a superb job of alienating part of its audience Friday afternoon with a completely tone deaf tweet. In an effort to rally engagement around a free subscription to Spotify Premium, the streaming music service tweeted "Ahead of #MothersDay, how would you explain Spotify to your mom?"
Seriously.
Real moms are not pleased. A screenshot of the now-deleted tweet is below.
Of course, in true Twitter fashion, users were quick to reply in defense of their technologically proficient mothers.
@crebma tweeted, "My mother is the head of IT for an enormous international corporation, so I don't think it would be an issue," while @postpunkjustin answered Spotify's query with, "It's that company that made that sexist #MothersDay tweet suggesting that mothers can't understand technology." @joshgnosis tweeted, "I'm pretty sure my mum was using @Spotify before I was."
Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design, brought the ouch on with her tweet: "You know what moms like to get for Mother's Day? Condescended to."
Hey Spotify, the whole "Moms don't understand technology" bit is really tired. The CEO of Yahoo is a mom. So is the COO of Facebook. Not to mention all the moms Twitter uses spoke out in defense of (sometimes, themselves). Here are a few 140 character #MothersDay tweets you could have pushed instead:
-In the spirit of #MothersDay, what songs would you put on a playlist for mom?
-How long has your mom been using Spotify? There could be free Spotify Premium in it for her!
-Share your perfect #MothersDay playlist for a chance to win free Spotify Premium for her! See? That wasn't so hard.
-How long has your mom been using Spotify? There could be free Spotify Premium in it for her!
-Share your perfect #MothersDay playlist for a chance to win free Spotify Premium for her! See? That wasn't so hard.