Twittering Teddy

How 2.0: Make a Twittering Teddy Bear from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

A few weeks back, Steve Coulson, from The Advance Guard, was telling me about a project he was working on that featured an animatronic teddy bear that could actually speak your tweets.

Well the bear's been live for about a week now, as part of a promotion for Verizon FIOS and My Home 2.0. The site features a video showing exactly how the show's "Techno-Gurus" made the bear (see above) and the bear itself is currently being auctioned off on eBay to benefit the Homeless Children's Education Fund.

Teddy's been a fairly active Twitterer and seems to understand the medium and it's conversational nature better than many humans.

What's more, the site's gotten a lot of press, both inside and outside the Twitterverse and helps cement the impression that FIOS is an advanced technology that helps you do cool things.

All without ever actually saying those words or anything remotely as heavy handed: social media plays are never about copy points and selling, always about giving people something memorable, fun and/or useful and getting out of the way and letting them draw their own conclusions.

Nicely done.