One of the employees responsible for the Vodafone UK Twitter account must surely be looking for a new job today after a homophobic tweet was sent out onto the microblogging platform to the company's 8,700 followers.

The tweet, which read; "is fed up of dirty homo's and is going after beaver", spread around Twitter as followers retweeted it with comments outlining their horror and disgust that a major corporate like Vodafone could have let a tweet slip out like that.

It does highlight the dangers of social media for companies, and whilst we're sure an internal policy was in place at the company, it does make the case for double-editing of comments on social networks all the more resounding.

For its worth, the company is tweeting all those that mentioned the tweet (originally thought to be a hack, until the company stated it was "a severe breach of rules by staff in our building"), apologising for any offence caused.

[Mr_Squishington TwitPic] (via Pocket-Lint)