Contributed by: ElyseRomano on Tuesday, December 04 2012 @ 10:31 am
Last modified on
As much as we all wish it would go away (this is 2012, after all!), online dating still hasn't managed to break free from the last, lingering vestiges of social stigma. Most of us are fully onboard the online dating boat, but for those stick-in-the-muds who are still holding out, the Internet has provided other options.
Yes, you can date online without actually dating online.
The secret is social media. Your Facebook page, your Twitter stream, your Pinterest account...each one is an opportunity to date on the World Wide Web without actually joining an online dating site. Barbara Maldonado recently spoke[*1] with the Huffington Post about her experience of foregoing traditional online dating in favor of a more social strategy.
Maldonado met her fiancé, Russell Roering, during a "Tweetup," a real-life meetup event organized via Twitter. "It was a book signing by Chris Brogan, who wrote this social media book, 'Trust Agent,'" she told HuffPo. "So we had that in common."
After meeting at the book signing, Maldonado and Roering continued their social media courtship. He sent her a request on LinkedIn and began following her blog that morning. They reconnected a few months later, after Maldonado saw on FourSquare that they would both be attending the same birthday party. She used Groupon to score herself their first official date.
Are you keeping track? That's five social media sites - Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Groupon, and a blog - that brought Maldonado and Roering together. And that's not all. Just wait 'til you hear the story of their engagement.
"He did leak the photo of my engagement ring on Pinterest, which then published to Facebook, which I saw and I started crying because I thought he was kidding!" Maldonado said to HuffPo. Thinking it was all a joke, she scolded her soon-to-be-fiancé for worrying her mother with the picture of the ring.
Roering scrapped his plans to pop the question the following day and proposed to Maldonado that night. (See the photo of the ring on Pinterest here.) And the rest, as they say, is history...
It worked for Maldonado and Roering, but would it work for everyone? Would it work for you?
Bianca Bosker, a contributor to Huffington magazine, thinks the answer is "yes." Using non-dating sites for romantic purposes is a more low-key, stress- and stigma-free way to date online. Dating via social media sites puts users "in a position to meet a significant other without having to admit they need dating help," she says, while also offering a "courtship process more akin to what people hope for offline."
Is social media the future of online dating?