How Entire Nations Are Using Social Media To Improve Themselves

It’s not just businesses and individuals who use and benefit from social media, whole nations are now getting in on the action, promoting themselves in new ways. Sweden’s Twitter feed was widely reported on over the weekend, as it is being used as the main front of a project called ‘Curators of Sweden‘, whereby one Swedish citizen a week has control over the Twitter feed @sweden, and posts about themselves and their lives.

It’s an interesting concept but given the personal nature of the tweets, which are generally in a light-hearted tone, the result of this project will most likely be to prompt people to think about Sweden as a holiday destination, if they like what they see on Twitter. And though the same could also be said for those looking to invest or do business in Sweden, the project does not target businesses directly in the way that Japan is looking to do with a new crowd sourcing site, JapanTrends is reporting.

The site, called Mazer, which is a shortened form of the Japanese word ‘mazeru’, which means ‘to mix’, is a brainchild of the“CoolJapan Strategy Promotion Program” run by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. The site works by using a three step weekly process: firstly, on a Monday, a question or problem is posed by one of a list of ‘creative directors’, who are well known, successful Japanese people. Then the public send their ideas/answers through social media, and finally these ideas are available to be purchased by companies or groups who see a way to use them.

It’s a clever use of crowd sourcing to promote Japan, with the main benefit being businesses, who may see Mazer as an addition to/replacement for consultants, when they can just look at the ideas posted by the public, which in itself poses an issue regarding copyright, because if an idea is public, what’s to stop someone from using it without buying it through Mazer? Mazer has anticipated this and states that “There may be concern that someone could take the idea creation and use it without permission, in other words, “steal it”. But in this era, if someone does steal an idea creation, someone is sure to step up and say so through social media.

Consequently, we believe it can provide a fair environment where idea creations won’t be used without permission even if made public.” It all seems a very democratic and open process, utilizing the perceived positives of social media, but whether it will actually self regulate and achieve real results remains to be seen. At any rate it will be an interesting project to follow and to see if this experiment in government led crowd-sourcing of ideas works.