Theme and Variations
In August of 2008, Bryce Roberts started posting an occasional "vc tip-o-the-day" to his Twitter account. When Fred Wilson saw the tips, he loved them, and he and Bryce hammered out the idea for a "VC tips" Twitter account that would allow a group of VCs and angel investors to publisher their tips for entrepreneurs. As I am now Emperor of the Twitter Bots, Fred asked me about the hows and whats of automating the whole thing.
A couple of days later, the @vctips bot went live. About 72 hours after going live, the bot had more than 800 followers. It appears that Twitter has a bunch of folks who are interested in getting tips from VCs.
From a technical perspective it's just a variation on the lyric of the day Twitter bot; rather than being an open forum where any Twitter user can post via an @reply to the bot, this one only reposts the direct messages that it receives. This means that the owner of the account can control who can post to the group account by following and unfollowing Twitter users. If the bot's account follows you, you can post...if not, no post for you.
Not exactly rocket surgery, but a really nice variation on the collaborative account idea. I haven't yet published the source code for this one anywhere, but if you're interested in seeing it, let me know.