Tamagotchi have grown up a little -we now have eg Pixel Chix , a phenomenon consisting of a game-like metaphor played out on a single LCD screen embedded in a mini doll’s house. Today’s invention is a social networking tool for these animated avatars.
If a child wants to take their pixelated friend, Chix1, to a party at someone else’s, they plug their phone into the house (via the normal house-to-house interface) and transfer the character to it (Chix1 waves goodbye, exists the house, waves hello on the phone screen a second later). When the phone comes within bluetooth range of the phone where Chix2 has been loaded, Chix1 will say “Can I go and play on Chix2’s phone please?”
They can then interact on the phone screen before eg having a sleepover at one or other’s house, etc…you get the picture. This would allow clothes and pet swapping too of course. It would be important for believability that only one embodiment of eg Chix2 be active at any one time, anywhere on the network (but parents could delete one and recreate it elsewhere, by text message, in the event of an alleged kidnapping).
This would have been a natural for the Disney phone operation and might even have stopped the whole thing imploding.
