Do you really think the people offended by this tweet would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made? I doubt it, especially considering that their follow-up tweet which did just that has only further offended those who have chosen to be offended.
I think the idea was for the $1 donation to be an incentive for people to retweet, which would spread the link to the Microsoft Disaster Response page.
> would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made?
I would find it more acceptable, yes. Not asking people to retweet in order for them to donate UP TO $100K would be more honorable.
There are noble ways to get 100K retweets. This is not one of them.
Not every public corporate humanitarian donation is a marketing stunt. I guess it would have been perceived very different, had they just announced that they donated a $100k instead of making the amount that they are going to donate a function of retweets. Just imagine them tweeting "Bing just donated $100k to help the people in Japan. Join us at http://blabla to find out what else we can do."?