A year ago, Caribou Coffee was in the midst of a CEO transition.

Today, it's a Twitter transition.

A caffeinated fan has been tweeting about the company @Caribou_Coffee since December. Last week the mystery tweeter revealed himself as Richard South, an artist and architectural designer in Charlotte, N.C. South signed off a few days ago and officially passed the account's reins to Caribou's marketing department.

Lauren Mihajlov, director of brand marketing for Caribou, tells the Business Agenda that her department knew about the unofficial tweeter before the company recently decided to jump into the Twittersphere itself. They approached South about adopting his account instead of setting up a competing one, and South was receptive to their offer.

For an outsider, South "really treated the brand well," Mihajlov said. He informed his 2,000-some followers last week that, "Someone else will take the antlers, so to speak." That someone is an employee in Mihajlov's department she describes as "younger and cooler than I am."

Mihajlov thinks many followers were surprised to learn it wasn't already an official account. The goal is to maintain the "integrity" of the existing account. They want to use it to get the word out about news and promotions, but avoid being too "over-the-top sales-y," Mihajlov said.

Now that it's in-house, she also envisions using the account to give customers 140-character glimpses into the company's inner workings, perhaps, for example, relaying messages from its coffee buyers as they travel the world. "We want to treat [our followers] well."

South, aka @wolfeyes, by the way, was compensated with a thank you in the form of a Caribou Coffee gift card. (I e-mailed him Tuesday afternoon to get the story from him, too. I'll update when/if I hear back.)