Vermont tourism hands Twitter account over to the public

When Sweden allowed private individuals to run its official Twitter feed, one guy tweeted about masturbation and a woman reportedly steered the account “right off a social media cliff” with her tweets about Hitler, Jews, and Down syndrome.

Time magazine called @Sweden an occasional “embarrassment and PR hazard,” and Forbes asked, “Why did Sweden hand its national twitter account over to a troll?”

So it wasn’t an ideal time for the Vermont Department of Tourism & Marketing to turn over its Twitter account to a series of citizens for a week each. But the Green Mountain folks forged ahead. And their social media courage won them an avalanche of good publicity and social media impressions, starting with The New York Times.