In 2011, we became the first country in the world to let go of an official communication channel and hand it over to our citizens.The Task: Position Sweden as a progressive country. And put the core values (openness, authenticity, caring, innovation) into action.The Solution:Remove nation-branding conventions by letting ordinary Swedes control the official @sweden account 1 week at a time. Let them represent Sweden through personal reflections: thoughtful, provocative and fun tweets. Then repeat the procedure week after week putting new persons in charge of the account. Tweet by tweet, the image of Sweden is built: dynamic, personal, innovative and deeply human. Then add: No censorship. No limits. Just like Sweden.

The response has been immediate and overwhelming. We’ve been featured in all major media such as The Times, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, all major blogs such as boingboing, thenextweb, readwriteweb and mashable as well as on sites such as Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Vogue, Washington Post, Globe and Mail, La Stampa and broadcasted on Swedish, Italian, and US radio for an equivalent PR value in excess of $19,800,000.Within 6 weeks, we attracted over 26,000 followers from 120 countries and started thousands of conversations, sparking discussions on transparency in social media and how technology can be used for democracy as well as inspiring others to start similar accounts like @WeAreAustralia, @PeopleOfTheUK, @TweetweekUSA and @CuratorsMexico.

Curators of Sweden is not a campaign, but an ongoing initiative that lives in real-time on the Twitter platform. The initiative started on Nobel Day, the 10th of December 2011. Each week sees a new spokesperson for the country, being revealed on Sunday night before starting his/her honourable task on Monday morning.An archive function of the curators’ tweets and a short description of the project are available in parallel on the curatorsofsweden.com website.