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My favorite friend on Twitter: A talking tree

Kenneth Hill | 08.10.10

In a charming example of using social media to make science and environmental awareness accessible, the folks at EOS magazine have given voice to a 100-year-old tree which tweets, facebooks, youtubes, and flickrs its feelings out to its friends.

Outfitted with a range of instrumentation, the Talking Tree monitors readings from the edge of Brussels using an ozone meter, light meter, dust meter and other gadgets, then translates the data into a social media stream of clever thoughts and observations:

"Turning nasty CO2 into some delicious O2. You can thank me later - http://bit.ly/9mkTf0"

"The air is getting a bit dirty. Do me a favor, take your bike"

"The days keep getting shorter. Need to prepare for winter"

A webcam captures the sights around it, which become status updates complete with video-log:

"My leaves are dancing in the wind:"



The loveliest form of sharing might just be the sounds the tree hears, which it captures via a microphone and uploads to its stream on Soundcloud.

Happiness Brussels did the creative, delivering a knock-out web site from which you can access the menu of social media outlets.

Impressive. Fun. Smart. The campaign supports EOS's “Low Impact Month” in November 2010 to encourage people to further participate in reducing their individual environmental footprints. Follow the Talking Tree on:

Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Flickr | Soundcloud | TalkingTree Home Page

Environment Social Media | Share +
social media, eos, talking tree