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“Curators of Sweden” – Social media (initially) gone wrong

[Update] Quite a few blogs have picked up this post and to correct any misquoting saying I called it a “Publicity stunt” etc. I have not. As I write below I am not opposed to the idea. Just what the first curator tweeted, particularly during his first day. Since then there’s been some brilliant curators and lovely, insightful tweets. However, it doesn’t change the fact that social media does need to be monitored.

Yesterday I went to the Swedish Church’s Lucia celebration in St Paul’s here in London. It was beautiful and the Swedish ambassador Nicola Clase delivered a great Christmas message. So did the Very Reverend Michael Persson. In both their roles they were great ambassadors for Sweden. Just as they should in their official and trusted roles.

VisitSweden’s english twitter account @sweden are normally also great at promoting Sweden and their tweets are valuable even to live abroad Swedes. Yesterday they tweeted this:

How cool would it be if we would let potentially any swede use this twitter account?

It got 6 retweets and 2 replies. I wasn’t one of them. I like(d) the @sweden account the way it was. I’m not interested in hearing what any Swede has to say. If so I’d follow a bunch of random Swedes.

Today some random Swede has taken over the account. It’s a disgrace.

The idea

The take over of the @sweden twitter account is referred to as ‘The curators of Sweden’ and this is how it’s described on the accompanying site:

Every week another person receives exclusivity over the Twitter account @sweden, which aims to present the country of Sweden through the mix of skills, experiences and opinions it actually consists of.

The idea with Curators of Sweden is that each curator will share both their own and relevant third party’s thoughts, stories, information and other content that is somehow linked to Sweden.

The idea is that the curators, through their tweets, create interest and arouse curiosity for Sweden and the wide range the country has to offer.

It sounds interesting enough and from reading the full description from the site the take over could actually have been nice.

The reality

Well, that’s very different from what the About page is portraying. The take over started today and the tweets from the first so called curator of Sweden has so far included very little that’s promoting Sweden, in a good way. Instead this is what’s filling the @sweden twitter stream:

First, it’s the warm welcome from the so called curator of Sweden:

Then he goes on telling us regular @sweden followers what we’re apparently now interested in

This is the kind of tweets he means and that according to the idea behind the take over are supposed to promote Sweden (includes an image of his bare legs btw)

…and this type of tweets

…and this

…which includes a link to this image:

Not everyone likes the new direction the account is taking and this is the response from the curator to what’s happening on the account:

And when Odd, one of the @sweden twitter account followers points out that Sweden deserves better than his tweets the curator replies:


Translation:

“I’m actually doing this for me and no one else”

The idea behind the account hasn’t even hit home to the current and first curator of Sweden.

Odd’s and Jack’s conversation goes on and Odd rightfully says that “We need a strong and loud voice that can portray the Swedish people and the beautiful landscapes from their best points. Is that you?” to which the curator arrogantly responds:

Translation: “For a week it probably is. It’s too dark anyway to take cool desktop background pictures of the city”

Dear @sweden. I’m sure this is not what you had in mind when you said:

The idea with Curators of Sweden is that each curator will share both their own and relevant third party’s thoughts, stories, information and other content that is somehow linked to Sweden.

For all the wonderful things Sweden has to offer I highly recommend visiting www.visitsweden.com, just not the twitter account, for now.

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