Cheeky tweeters use EU outreach experiment to mock

(AP) -- It was meant to be an effort to plug Twitter users into the conversation at the summit of European power. Instead it ended in very public embarrassment.

European Union officials fell into a trap after scrolling tweets from the social networking site on big screens at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels this week.

Twitter users saw opportunity and used keywords to post tweets Thursday mocking scandals involving Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The tweets quickly disappeared from the screens, though appeared again Friday. An EU official said scrolling the tweets is a pilot project, one of the EU's many Twitter-related projects.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity according to his office policy.

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