Tweetup in Avoca

I met a group of friends in Avoca Rathcoole last Friday for coffee and a general catch-up. I was looking forward to hearing everyone’s news and latest gossip.



Not so unusual, you might think, except that I’d never met any of these friends in real life before. Although I talked to them almost daily, I knew what they looked like only from their avatars.

You see, this was a tweetup – a Twitter meet-up. We had all connected, chatted and become friends on Twitter through our common involvement with Inkwell, an online writers’ group.

It transpired that several of us were quite close to each other all along. Hazel Gaynor (third from right) lives in Kilcullen, while I (farthest right) am a Kilcullen girl born and bred.

Plenty of people seem to believe that connections made on social networking sites are just 'virtual friends', not actually real people. The beauty of sites such as Twitter is that one can connect with other people with exactly the same set of interests as your own, from all over the world.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, those people are to be found just down the road from you.

Jane Travers.

Follow me on Twitter @janetravers
and on my Blog 'Jane Obsessed with Jane', www.janetravers.com