My latest article has appeared in The Georgia Straight today [tgs]. The article is about social media services, most significantly Twitter, being used as a dating tool. The trouble is that while I've heard stories of people meeting via Twitter or on Facebook actually tracking people down who had was hard. Especially since the article needed a Vancouver focus, that meant finding someone who was dating someone they met on Twitter and that lived in the Lower Mainland.
With some help from Rebecca [m604] I was able to track down Meg Fowler [mf] who had met her current boyfriend Gradon Tripp via Twitter a few years ago. Fowler had been talked to by quite a few media outlets in the past, since her story is pretty unique and gives a good human dimension to a tech story. However the fact that she's been interviewed by so many people suggests to me that Twitter dating really isn't as big of a thing as I thought it was when I first set out. If Fowler and Tripp's relationship is one of the few being reported on, it's likely that it's one of the few around.
However I do think the Tweet-up aspect to the story is important. Dating only through Twitter, or just through email, is hard to do. Making friends that way works, I've made friends through the internet, but dating is hard. However as people make connections online, and then meet at a Tweet-up and build on that, I think there's no doubt that Twitter dating will become more prevalent.
