This past Tuesday marked twelve years since the tragedies that unfolded on September 11, 2001. Although social media barely existed back then, it’s now a large part of our culture, and most companies have adopted it into their marketing and branding strategies. As such, some well-known companies felt the need to post 9/11-related social media content on Tuesday. Here are a couple who drew the ire of their followers.

AT&T

AT&T perhaps, received the most criticism for their use of social media on the anniversary of 9/11. They posted the below image. Most of the criticism was that AT&T was looking to advertise their smartphones by taking advantage of a national tragedy.

AT&T quickly removed the image, and also issued an apology

We apologize to anyone who felt our post was in poor taste. The image was solely meant to pay respect to those affected by the 9/11 tragedy.

— AT&T (@ATT) September 11, 2013

Los Angeles Lakers

The Los Angeles Lakers also received some criticism for a 9/11-related image that they tweeted on Tuesday. The photo features Kobe Bryant, with the hashtag #NeverForget placed over the image. In the photo, Kobe happens to be wearing a patch on his jersey in remembrance of 9/11.

Some criticized the image for its lack of relevance to the tragedy, and the fact that it focused more on the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. Others criticized it as being an attempt to make light of Kobe’s unorthodox hair style at the time.

Soon after being tweeted the image was removed, and Lakers spokesperson, John Black, issued an apology on behalf of the team.

“We apologize to anyone who took this differently than we intended and were therefore offended by it. We used a photo of how we commemorated 9/11 in the 2001-02 season, shortly after the tragedy occurred, because we wanted to show our support of what we felt at that time and continue to feel now. Out of respect for the intensely personal nature of how people remember this day, and that we recognize that not everyone understood the intent of our message, we pulled down our tweet and photo. Ultimately, our intent was to honor the spirit of remembering a day that we should all never forget.”

– Courtesy of Sam Amick of USA Today

This reinforces some public opinion that companies need to be more sensitive when posting social media content on occasions such as this. What do you think? Were the tweets in poor taste, or are people overreacting?