By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

Disney's Toy Story 3 hit the movie theaters this past weekend and dominated the box office with a record-breaking $1.3 billion debut for North America. I haven't seen it yet, but the trailer does look adorable and the critics all seem to love it. Here are some other impressive numbers; it was the largest opening for a June release, the second largest for an animated movie and the third biggest weekend of this year.

The plot of this story finds Woody, Buzz, and the rest of their toy-box friends dumped in a day-care center after their owner, Andy, departs for college. With it being such as well-know brand, as well as Disney-Pixar production, it had quite the marketing campaign associated with it.

Besides some big partners, such as USPS and Target, who are running ads and promotions associated with the movie, the official Toy Story 3 website is sponsoring three different interactive promotions of their own:

The Toy Box Contest provides entrants with graphics and scenes from the movie for participants to download and then use in the creation of a video of themselves. They can then upload it for a chance to win some great prizes including a 52" flat screen TV and Sony PS3's.

The Toy Story 3 Great Escapes Sweepstakes offers a chance to win one of three grand prizes to help "escape the ordinary". These include a trip for 4 to the premiere of the Cars 2 movie, a Disney cruise for four or a 3D home theater system with a Blue-Ray collection of DVD's.

Comic Creator Contest invited participants to create a comic for a chance to win more great prizes. The entries look amazing and the judges are in the process of choosing the finalists now.

The website contains so much more, so take a look and have some fun, no mater what age you are.

What was really unique from a marketing perspective was that Toy Story 3 was a first in the social media marketing area with the first ever "Promoted Trends" on Twitter. I saw it there starting on Friday and I wish I had taken a screen grab of it cause it's gone now. Twitter decided to test it out with the Disney/Pixar folks so it will be interesting to hear the results. A big yellow box was shown alongside the topic which alerted users that is was a promoted trend, not organic. Toy Story 3 was listed at the bottom of the Trending Topics List. If the user clicked on the link it took them to a search results page to see what people were saying about the film.

Twitter is hoping this will be one way to help them monetize the site. Some have criticized it saying that it really isn't a trending topic if it's a paid placement. However, someone compared it to Google's sponsored ads and said that Google wouldn't turn down a PPC ad just because a website wasn't appearing organically high enough on a search results page. So we'll see where this goes. I think if it helps Twitter make money, let it go. The medium has become too important as a real time search tool, and as the world's news source, for it to go away.

As Buzz Lightyear would say, To Infinity and Beyond! That's where Twitter will soon take us and I bet you Andy is now on Twitter!