YOU HAD
ME @ LOL
others. While messaging strangers is frowned upon on Facebook,
on Twitter, where public sharing
is the norm, making new friends
is encouraged. See someone talking about your favorite sports
team? Jump right in and say
something. Which is precisely
what Damien Basile did.
Basile, a 32 year-old digital
strategy expert for a boutique
consulting company, didn’t know
Christina Coster, 31, when he
first tweeted at her three years
ago. He had been searching for
other Twitter users to follow and
Coster, a freelance event planner and health care professional,
caught his eye because her Twitter
profile picture, though tinier than
a postage stamp, was “cute.” Call
it love at first site.
“Facebook is really only close
friends and family…You’re not
going to send someone a friend
request on Facebook if you don’t
know them or haven’t interacted with them,” says Basile,
who broke the ice with Coster by
sending a public tweet that included her username. “On Twitter, I’d allow anybody to follow
me and I interact with a lot of
people I don’t know.”
“It’s more for strangers inter-
HUFFINGTON
10.14.12
ested in the same topics as you,”
Basile adds. Coster and Basile’s
courtship spanned several social
media services. Public tweets directed at one another turned into
privately “direct messaging” on
Twitter, then chatting on AOL
Instant Messenger. They eventually met in person thanks to
a mutual friend’s Foursquare
check-in. Three years later,
they’re still going steady.
Though Basile once joined the
personals section of online sex
and culture magazine Nerve.com
in the “far past,” he soon tired of
traditional online dating sites,
which he calls “so formulaic” with
their “plug this in, make a statement about this” approach.
Twitter, and communities like
it, can serve as a sea of “wingmen” who can help singles meet
the friends of their online friends,
notes Coster.
“Twitter for me was like having another group of friends who
could set me up with people,” says
Coster. “I would look at Twitter
and social media in general as a
new group of friends to introduce you to their friends. People
say a great way to meet people is
through their friends…That holds
true online or offline.”