What would you tweet if given full control over your country's official Twitter account? In a project called Curators of Sweden, the official Twitter account @Sweden is handed off directly to the country's citizens. Each week, a new Swede is given the opportunity to freely tweet whatever comes to mind.
While the project has been going on for 24 weeks, it made national headlines yesterday when a 27 year old mother of two, Sonja, was publicly ridiculed for her comments on Jewish and gay people. Since then, her tweets have been the talk of the nation, causing many to criticize Sweden's strategy.
The Social Media Manager at Visitsweden defends the project, telling the Wall Street Journal:
“It’s very important for us to let everyone take a unique viewpoint. Every one of our curators is there with a different perspective.” - Tommy Sollén
The Twitter community reacted with outrage, yet the number of people following the account skyrocketed from 34,000 to roughly 46,000 followers.
And censorship is out of the question.
“You cannot look at any specific tweet, you can only judge a curator on the whole week…How else are you going to show the multi-faceted people that Sweden is composed of?” - Tommy Sollén
Whether or not you agree with the reasoning behind the social media experiment, it's hard to deny that Sonja is doing her part in sharing a very "unique" viewpoint:
The dinner was horrible. It felt like eating your way through a shaved vikings chest, while he's trying to kill you. — @sweden / Sonja (@sweden) June 13, 2012
So, what would you tweet if given full access to the official United States Twitter account?
Also, check out the Wall Street Journal and Mashable for some great social media curations of @Sweden's most controversial tweets!