Washington:  Two American companies have been "Twitter-jacked" this week, taken over by hackers posting crass messages to corporate Twitter pages and replacing corporate logos with those of competitors, further illustrating the often daunting tasks companies face as they strive to manage their social media feeds.

"Managing social media accounts is truly a 24X7 job," said Nicole Siobal, president and co-founder of Social Butterflye, a branding agency that assists startups with creating and managing their digital presence.

"If you do find your brand has become the target of a hacker, it's really important to get ahead of it, and put a statement out right away," she said.

That's just what global fast food chain Burger King attempted to do Monday, when its official Twitter account was taken over by hackers who replaced the company's logo with rival McDonald's.

"We just got sold to McDonalds," the hackers Tweeted to Burger King's more than 83,000 followers.

Dozens of tweets followed over the course of several hours, including some that contained references to drug use and laced with obscenities. Representatives from Burger King said they quickly contacted Twitter to temporarily suspend the account and put out a statement to its customers apologizing for the hack.

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