Twitter blames human error for Vine porn gaffe

Accidentally promoting pornography on a new social media service is not the ideal way to generate interest in your offerings, but that's what Twitter accidentally did on Monday on its new Vine video service.

Twitter has been forced to admit that "human error" was to blame for a pornographic video being placed as an editor's pick on its newly launched Vine service.

The firm launched Vine last week, showing off its capabilities to let users record and share six-seconds worth of editable footage.

However, complaints surfaced soon after the launch that users were sharing pornographic content.

On Monday the situation took a turn for the strange when users reported seeing an X-rated video on the front page of the main app for the service and it seemed the service may have been hacked.

However in a statement sent to V3 Twitter admitted that the video had been selected in error and apologised for the video.

"A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor's Picks, and upon realising this mistake we removed the video immediately," a spokesperson said.

"We apologise to our users for the error."

The incident is embarrassing for Twitter coming so soon after the new service was launched and it hopes to use the platform to engage further with its users and allow advertisers to promote content through the service on its timeline.

Ultimately the story goes to prove one inalienable truth: people want to get naked and post it online. The reasons why, though, are far less clear.