Remember to save the long stories, explanations and history for real life meetings. Like with anything on the internet, most users are only likely to read the first couple paragraphs of a profile or watch the first 30 seconds of a personal video. Be thoughtful about what you say up front. Get the important details – like your areas of interest, goals and ambitions – out quickly or they might not ever be read. Don’t think of your profile as you, but rather as a sleek, edited representation of yourself. You need to impress quickly in order to be competitive, even in the online dating world, and you can save the gory details for a real life encounter.

The same rules definitely apply when sending a message or an e-mail to a potential lover, friend or date. Obviously make sure to show an interest in something the person said previously or posted in their profile, but don’t drone on and on about yourself. Each message or e-mail should be thought of as part of a conversation – just say enough so that the conversation can continue, no need to write a novel. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the days of the long love letters is over. Even these days, soldiers overseas look forward to Skype chats with their loved ones as opposed to letters that take weeks to arrive. So there’s no reason for you to send a 12-paragraph e-mail to someone you’re trying to date. Remember, a little bit of mystery goes a long way. Save the intense conversational topics for a first or second date, not a first or second message. Unless you’re a novel writer, your life story will be a lot more interesting coming through a face-to-face chat or broken down into several back and forth messages.

Essentially, the key to the internet is to remember that the shorter, the better – and this rule applies to the online dating world as much as anywhere else. When it comes to personal interactions, people may have longer attention spans, but the medium of the internet substantially shortens people’s attention spans, so limit yourself to a short witty repartee, a quick piece of a conversation saying just enough to leave them wanting more. After all, isn’t the point of flirting online just to make sure you get to test your skills in person?

Related: Online Dating: Schedule to Meet in Person Sooner, Not Later

Not sure what I mean? I recently heard the following exchange at a party:

Guy: “Hey, how’s your grandmother doing?”
Girl: “I’m sorry, who are you?”
Guy: “Oh, I follow you on Twitter. I saw that she was sick.”
Girl: “Oh. Um. She’s better, thanks. Uh, could you excuse me?”

This is a very clear example of someone failing to grasp the one-way nature of most social media communication. He obviously hoped to come off as caring and thoughtful, and she thought he was a creepazoid.

It can be confusing to maintain social graces (after all, if she’s posting it in her Twitter feed, doesn’t she want people to ask about it?). The key thing to remember is that social media requires ordinary people to manage their own public communication and image (aka: do their own PR). Sadly, many ordinary people aren’t great at doing their own PR. They don’t think very carefully about who will be receiving the information they send out, or how it might be perceived. There’s a reason Facebook firings happen so often!

Many people who post on social media sites view their posts as ephemeral, or imagine them having a targeted audience even if they’re posting publicly. (Someone who posts about her grandmother might do so to update the people in her feed who know her well, but if she doesn’t imagine anyone else caring about it, she’ll be put off when a stranger mentions it to her.) This isn’t very logical, but as I mentioned before, using social media requires a specific type of thinking that some people are great at, and others… not so much.

So how do you make sure things go smoothly when you meet a “friend” who’s actually a stranger (or relative stranger) in real life? How do you cross the digital divide?

These pointers will help you avoid freaking anyone out:

1. When you meet, identify yourself as a follower/”friend.” Even heavy social media users can feel threatened by someone who spouts information about them that they haven’t shared directly. Even if they know that you’ve gotten your info from status updates, they might be put off by a stranger approaching them as though they’re already friends. Play it safe, and, when introduced to them (or introducing yourself), mention casually that you’re Facebook friends or that you follow them on Twitter. This approach has two benefits: first, it directs the conversation to something you have in common, and second, it lets them know where they can find you, and why you already know so much about them.
2. Identify common connections. If you follow this person on Twitter because your friend mentioned how great her tweets were, or because you have some shared acquaintances, mention that. The less you seem like “person from the internet who approached me out of the blue” and more like “person who travels in my circles but I’ve never met,” the better. If you have no connections in common, but you like their tweets, it’s totally appropriate to say that. Just keep in mind that even though you know a lot about them, they might not follow you or read your updates, so you should approach the conversation as though you’re recently-introduced strangers. Talk about something other than Twitter, if you can. If you follow them because of a shared interest, use that as a springboard for conversation, but don’t dwell on what you read. Concentrate on the person in front of you, and make a here-and-now connection with them.
3. Be Honest. If you’re absolutely dying to talk about something they mentioned online, be direct about it. If you know from their status updates that they like country music, don’t work in a Garth Brooks reference and then act surprised when they squeal “He’s my favorite.” If you read something in their feed that you’d like to address, ask them about it and let them know you read it. Trying to be clever or sneaky with information someone else has shared is dishonest at best and downright creepy at worst. Be upfront about the fact that you know a little about them — that’s a perfect transition to letting them know that you’d like to know more about them.
4. Follow Up. Once you’ve connected in person, it’s easy to say, “I’ll drop you a line on Facebook sometime!” You have to actually do it if you want to be real friends. When you see something that reminds you of the person, or are invited to an event you think they’d like, forward them the info with a note reminding them of how you met. “Hey! We met at Jason’s party the other night. I really enjoyed our conversation, and thought you might like this event/link. Hope to see you again soon!” This will help cement their memory of you as a real person, not an avatar, and will open up the door for connecting in-person in the future.

From there, you’re in a great position to follow up and invite them to hang out in person. One final warning: not all Facebook friendships are destined to turn into real-life bonds, so if you don’t click in-person with someone you admire online, don’t sweat it. With the number of “friends” we all have these days, there’s probably a better fit out there in cyberspace somewhere. You just have to find it.

Happy Friending!

Related posts:

• Stalk Dirty to Me: When to Let on That You’ve Followed Her Online
• Mirror, Mirror: What Does Google Tell People About You?

To start, you sign in with Twitter or Facebook, with the option to make your updates public. This is all that is required at minimum. However, to increase your “scoop rating,” you can add more information. You can fill out your profile by importing photos from Flickr or Facebook; showing your favorite movies and TV shows by connecting with your Netflix or Hulu account; sharing your favorite music with Pandora or Last.fm; and you can also import feeds from Seesmic and Amazon.

On par with traditional sites, you can edit your profile with relationship status, the type of relationship you’re looking for, gender preference, ethnicity, religion, politics and if you’re a smoker. Plus, you can fill out an About Me section.

The Search

When searching for someone, you can filter by gender, age, zip code, keywords, the type of relationship they’re looking for, and basic categories like religion, ethnicity, etc. When you visit someone’s profile, you see keywords they’ve recently mentioned, their imported photos, and you can view their lifestream (e.g. tweets, Facebook status updates, the last movie they added to their Netflix queue.) To contact them, you can send an icebreaker. If you can find them on Twitter or Facebook, then you can contact them directly on those networks. (Gelato does not link out to anyone’s profile pages on other social networks.)

The Verdict

The upside of Gelato is that (1) you get to see more of the “real” person, because – if they have a high scoop rating – you’re getting a peek into their daily life and entertainment preferences; and (2) their stream is always updating, so you have motivation to visit their profile frequently (in case you haven’t already reached out to them on other networks).

As always, you can’t really tell if you’re compatible with someone until you meet in person, but if you can already tell that they’re funny (from their tweets) and that you both like sci fi and Lady Gaga, then you’re guaranteed to have something to chat about.

In addition, Gelato seems to be a good service for just finding friends. For example, if you’re straight, there seems to be no reason you can’t search for people of the same gender in your area using a few keywords. If you both have the same interests, you can just contact them via Facebook and they don’t even have to know you found them on Gelato!

Oh… did I mention it’s free?

This article has been corrected since its original version.

A lot of people choose to pretend they don’t stalk on Facebook. And maybe they don’t. But pretty much every guy and girl I know stalks the crap out of every guy and girl in their lives, especially someone who they think of banging/have ever banged/almost banged/know they are going to bang soon. And that’s fine. Since we all do it, why not just admit it?

Because the thing is, Facebook and Twitter do the stalking for you these days. Just log in and you’re going to see what someone has been up to. Fine, perhaps you don’t see it on her status (“Shannon is GOING TO THE BAR TONIGHT!”) and you avoided seeing it in her photos (a new album called “MY NIGHT AT THE BAR!”) and you missed it on her Wall (five new posts saying, “OMG it was SO GREAT seeing you at the bar last night!”) and sure, maybe you didn’t see her Tweet, “I LOVE GOING To THE BAR!” … sure, it’s possible. But on Monday when you ask her what she did over the weekend, she’s going to think you’re either not into her, or you’re full of BS.

But I kind of can’t blame you. If you say, “So how was the bar this weekend?” and you’re not someone she’s thinking of banging/have ever banged/almost banged/wants to bang soon … she’s going to think you’re the biggest creeper on the planet.

Some guidelines for what it’s appropriate to reveal:

Admit to stalking your friends and your “friends.”

• If you are comfortable calling or texting a guy, it’s OK to admit to looking at his tagged photos.
• DON’T admit to stalking someone whose phone number you don’t even have. And on that note, DON’T pull phone numbers off of Facebook without permission. Yes, it’s out there, but a simple, “Hey, is it cool if I call you this weekend?” — either in person or via Facebook message — is pretty much required.

Check yourself.

If you say you saw it on Facebook, but really you saw it on Twitter, she’s going to know you’re stalking her from all angles.

• DO accept that everyone uses Facebook a lot.
• DON’T pretend you didn’t glean your information from it. If she says she went to a party dressed as Wonder Woman and you respond, “Oh, yeah! I … think I heard that … somewhere …” she’s going to wonder why you don’t just fess up.
• DO come off as less weird/creepy by just admitting you are a little bit weird/creepy. She says: “So I was walked home by the cops wearing a Wonder Woman costume…” You say: “Ohh. Yeah, don’t think this is creepy but I saw pictures of that on Mini-Feed.” Easy-peasy!

Get caught.

Let her catch you stalking her from time to time if you really like her. If she is already into you — we’re talking third date here — and she says, “Oh I had such a great time at the beach last weekend, I can’t wait to go back,” and you say, “Yeah, your pictures made it look like a total blast! Do you go there often?” she’ll be flattered and she’ll blush — and when girls are flattered and blushing, people get laid. If she’s not into you, she’ll still be pleased that you caught something important to her.

Stalk her fan pages

If someone is a fan of, “I hate when people send texts that just say ‘k’”… don’t send her a text that just says “k”! Then she’ll just think you don’t care. But DON’T go out of your way to reference obscure things that you read she’s into. Some people just accept everything Facebook suggests or don’t update their hobbies very often.

When you’re the stalkee:

• DO make her feel more comfortable about stalking you by assuming she already has. (Because … she has.) If you’re chatting with her about your awesome vacation and you just uploaded 300 pics, just say, “Did you see the pictures of us white water rafting?” Then she knows you’re cool with a little creeping.
• DON’T retell a story that’s been all over Facebook and Twitter without a disclaimer. “Yeah, you may have seen it on Facebook, but I got a new job!” Again, this just assumes that everyone is stalking and says it’s OK. If your whole life is on the internet, then try not to go into major detail over something the other person already probably read about in great detail on your blog.
• DO feel OK with not accepting a second date because someone’s been all up on your Mini-Feed with Farmville updates. Yeah, we’re sure finding pumpkins and selling virtual goats is fun, but sometimes stalking leads to judging, and certain updates are deal breakers.

Ultimately, most people log into Facebook and Twitter a lot and stalk without even trying; those people are going to be really flattered when they hear the person they are into was stalking them back. There’s a fine line between good stalking and creepy stalking, but if you can perfect this, your next status update is going to say, “Shannon is now In a Relationship.”

Related posts:

• The Pros and Cons of Googling Your Date
• Online Dating: Be Safe, NOT Paranoid
• Stalk-Her: New iPhone App (VIDEO)

As we find ourselves checking in with Twitter throughout the day, we’re all in an ongoing conversation. But when you notice an increasing proportion of @ replies to and from a certain ex, you’re engaging with him throughout your routine, chatting with him whether you’re in the dentist’s waiting room or the back of a taxi. This is a prime opportunity to notice all those things you liked about him in the first place, and after a few conversations or a few as-friends excursions, you’re ready to give things another try.

Whether it’s been a few weeks or a few years apart, reuniting with an ex is heady excitement! I don’t mean a night or two of ill-advised ex sex (Don’t fall for it! NO!), but restarting your relationship.

Why It Works

After a split, you’ve been reminded of what you liked in the first place. You’ve had a chance to check out those greener pastures, and decided what you really want. If your romance fizzled out, this may be just the jolt of energy you two need to rekindle the connection.

When you and your sweetie reconnect, you both consciously choose to be together, which can result in an even stronger relationship than just staying together from dating apathy, or slipping into a semi-relationship with a hookup buddy. By getting back together after time apart, you’ve both decided to be in a relationship and you’ve both decided to make it good.

You have perspective now. Did you split over deal-breaking relationship disasters or minor imperfections? Dating around or returning to single life helps you figure out if talking over Dr. House is a dump-worthy offense. 

Why It Fails

Often the issues that drove you apart in the first place will resurface. Be especially wary of this if one – or both – of you has promised to change. The best intentions in the world can’t change a fundamental part of your character.

If you split over your partner’s actions, make sure you’re really ready to forgive and forget. His days of exchanging phone numbers on the sly may be over, but your relationship is still doomed if you can’t let it go.

There are other fish in the Twitterstream, so make sure it’s genuine interest and not just a bit of loneliness bringing you and the ex back together.

Related posts:

• Ruining a Budding Romance on Twitter
• Twitter dating sites
• Tweets from between the sheets

You can send your Twitter status updates directly to Facebook or Myspace and vice versa. You can tweet from your LinkedIn profile, or announce directly from your Foursquare profile that you’ve just become the mayor of the 9th Avenue Chipotle. (Why you would want to do this is an entirely different question). You can even use a syndicating service like ping.fm to send the same status update everywhere.

There’s lots of great advice on how to sync up your social media profiles (Mashable’s How To section is a great place to start). But it doesn’t seem like anyone’s offering advice on whether syncing and linking is actually a good idea or not.

The reasons it’s appealing are obvious – it can save you a lot of time, and it can increase your visibility across multiple social networks with minimal effort. But there are potential drawbacks to syncing, too – you may compromise your privacy or reputation if you link your very small, very personal Twitter feed to your huge “friend anyone” Facebook profile. Or if you’re looking for love online, it’s pretty important to know what your potential partners know about you, and how you link your status updates changes that. If you want dates to know more about you, you should consider syndicating. But if you’re very private (or if you have anything to hide) you’re probably best served by updating each social network individually.

If you’re unsure whether you should syndicate your social media status updates, let me help you.

It’s a good idea:

• When you’re confident that your tweets represent you positively, even to people you don’t know that well. Your Twitter following is probably smaller and closer-knit than your LinkedIn following, and that may mean you post different content. If you feel like your tweets or updates paint a rosy overall picture, you stand to lose nothing by showing them to more people. But if you’re in the habit of bitching bitterly in your tweets because you know your friends will insta-DM and make you feel better, make sure you feel okay about those same things going to everyone in your Facebook friend list.

• When all of your accounts have roughly the same “fan base.” Make sure you’re okay with everything you post on each network going to all of your “friends” on the other ones. (Also important: if your mom reads your FB but not your tweets, or if you and your ex maintain a Facebook friendship but you know he doesn’t really want to read updates about fancy restaurants you visit with your new beau).
• When you want more information about you to be available to the public. This goes back to a previous article where I talked about how to be your own PR person. If you feel like none of the networks you’re on have a clear picture of you because you’re spread too thin, syndicating your updates can be a great way to flesh out your online profile. (And if you’re trying to impress someone new, being interesting and charming in places they can find you doesn’t hurt!)
• When the people closest to you are social media geeks, too. Being tweeted about or having intimate details shared with the world can feel invasive or disrespectful to people who aren’t quite sold on the idea that privacy is dead. Make sure the people who populate your tweets (closest friends and people you’re dating, especially) are okay with their comings and goings being broadcast across several social networks.

It’s a bad idea:

• When you’re dating more than one person. This is especially true if they don’t know about one another yet, but even if they do… it can breed jealousy, resentment, and drama, and unless you’re going on casting calls for reality TV, that’s probably not what you want.
  
• When you’re in the habit of fudging the truth. If you tell a lot of white lies to spare feelings, they may come back to haunt you when you start making information about what you’re doing available across networks. If your boss is your Facebook friend, you’d never post a status update about getting a mani/pedi on a sick day. But if you’re likely to post a Twitpic of your new nails on the same day, linking accounts is going to get you busted. (Syncing the accounts and just telling the truth might be a better overall approach. But if you must fib, do not link accounts!)

• When you have more than one internet persona, or share things of different privacy levels on different networks. If you have Twitter and Livejournal filed under “personal” and you think of Facebook and LinkedIn as “business,” you probably use them differently. Old habits die hard, so if you’re usually a neurotic twitterer, you may post some very personal insecurities that you don’t want your boss to read in an account that he can now access. Alternately, you may end up censoring yourself or posting a lot of job-related stuff in your formerly “personal” accounts (boring your followers, who are used to dishier stuff). If you post different kinds of information to different social networks, chances are that syncing up is going to stress you out.
  
• When you post things that might be confusing or offensive when taken out of context. If you post anything across any of your social networks that’s really only funny to a select group of people, be wary of shipping that information to other accounts. The Facebook status update that you posted specifically to mock something a friend posted on your Wall might appear either bizarre or nasty to your Twitter followers, who can’t see your friend’s original comment.

• When you have “secret” accounts that shares usernames with any other profiles. Let’s say your Twitter username is also the name you use for your many online dating profiles. Maybe you’re comfortable with the people you tweet to being able to find your dating profiles if they google your username. Are you as comfortable with the people on your Facebook account, LinkedIn, or other accounts being able to google the information? If you’re not, don’t sync those accounts.

Deciding whether or not to sync your social networking accounts is a personal decision, and how you make it will probably depend a lot on how you use them. If you’re not comfortable with the thought of everyone on every account being able to see all of your status updates, syndicating your accounts with ping.fm is probably a bad idea. But if you find yourself thinking, “I could share Twitter and Facebook, but I wouldn’t want to link any of that to LinkedIn,” then just link the two of them.

But if you’ve thought about it, and you feel confident that you want your status updates to say the same thing at each site, it means you’re sharing with others at one privacy level and using one persona/voice across the board. It also means you’re the sort of user that syndicating services were built for. If this is the case, ping.fm away, my friend!

Related posts:

• Bad Reputation: Doing Damage Control on Your Internet Profile

• Mirror, Mirror: What Does Google Tell People About You?
• How to Represent Yourself Honestly Online

• We all know, of course, that bashing the ex is a social media sin. Even if your breakup was miserable and messy, don’t let your anger contaminate your online brand. Call a friend, vent in a paper journal, then tweet about some of the interesting things you’re doing sans ex. Publicly complaining about a previous relationship only shows your new interest that you can be a bitter harpy.

• You may be having a grand ol’ time on Saturday night at the bar, but be aware that a timeline full of drunken tweets may not represent you in the best light to a potential new love. A constantly drunk girl may publish some hilarious tweets that increase her ever-important follower count, but this image doesn’t advertise “serious relationship potential.”
• Spreading malicious gossip is never a nice thing to do, but Twitter saves and archives these catty whispers for all to see. Don’t let a potential love interest — or a new friend — see you tweeting nasty comments behind another friend’s back or laughing at someone else’s expense.
• Be careful about tweeting too frequently from a dull day at class or work. Not only will you be in hot water should your professor or boss stumble on your tweets, but a timeline repeating that you’re bored really says that you’re boring.
• Let all your interesting facets shine through by picking creative links as a conversation starter. We all love the FAIL Blog, but wouldn’t it be more exciting to find something new and be the one who gets retweeted?

What you share on Twitter is public. And it stays public. In the time of viral retweets, Facebook sharing, and even the oddly archival splogs, it’s almost impossible to take back what you’ve said. So make sure your Twitter timeline doesn’t scare away potential love interests!

Related posts:

• The low-risk guide to flirting on Twitter

• Tweets from between the sheets
• What his Twitter timeline is telling you

Image Credit: Twitter inverted bird was found at techZilo and appears to be taken from Twitter.com itself.

TweetLove

They say: “TweetLove carefully analyzes tweets across the whole twitterverse to identify single guys and gals out there and post their tweets here for you.”

How it works: TweetLove allows you to search by zipcode for local tweets that mention singledom (they return results using keywords like “boyfriend”, “single” and “lonely”). When you see a tweet that interests you, you can reply, forward it to a friend, or direct message (DM) the tweeter.

The verdict: Like all Twitter-based services, TweetLove has a limited set of data with which it can match you, so your pool of information is kind of limited to ‘They’re single!’. On the bright side, TweetLove — unlike some other services — does a good job of displaying tweets from actual single people. The browsing interface is easy to use, and if you’re in a cheeky mood, asking out one of the cute singletons in your city who complains about datelessness might just net you twerrific results.

MyTweetheart.com

They say: “Are you looking for friendship, romance, and/or love? @ or DM me a message to be added to the site! It is FREE! ♥ Find Your Twitter Tweetheart here! ♥”

How it works: You follow @MyTweetheart on Twitter and then send them a DM letting them know which category you’d like your profile listed in (Men Seeking Women, Women Seeking Women, etc.). They add you to their searchable database of single Twitter users.

The verdict: Twitter users have notoriously short attention spans, so I wasn’t enthused about the user-initated three-step process, but I followed it through. Unfortunately, the end of the rainbow didn’t yield a pot of gold. The website is eye-achingly early nineties, and the search results are peppered with cam-girls and people who aren’t really single but happened to mention the word “single” in one of their tweets. (My second match was a guy whose tweet explained that he’d gotten drunk and done the naked penis-tucking Silence of the Lambs dance for his wife, and he thought he might be single now.) My overall impression falls somewhere in the vicinity of “Yikes.”

Flirt140.com

They say: “Find and meet cute, interesting people on Twitter!”

How it works: You can search Flirt140 by gender, location and keyword. When you sign up, you tag your own profile with searchable keywords. When you find someone you like, you can tag them with keywords you think are suitable for them (the most commonly tagged keyword is “cute”). You can also wink at them or send them private mail.

The verdict: The key novelty of this service is keyword tagging. I successfully found people I know and people I’d like to know by doing a local keyword search for my interests. It’s nice to have a bit more information than ‘they’re single!’ before following someone … and if you both love, say, female-fronted cello rock, you can be confident before contacting any potentials that you’re going to have lots to tweet about.

140Love.com

They say: “Based on your answers to our profile questions, an algorithm will produce those who most closely match the qualities you seek in someone.”

How it works: 140Love matches users based on keywords, but also on real-life commonalities. Each dater answers questions about political views, personal history, and lifestyle/partner preferences. Your best matches according to the 140Love algorithm are e-mailed to you daily.

The verdict: 140Love is the closest answer to a proper matching site in the Twitterverse, and it’s definitely the site most likely to find you someone with whom you’ll click. A few caveats: the length of the sign-up process may not appeal to people who love Twitter for the nownownow!ness of it, and the program’s matching system involves lots of mutual auto-following and subsequent unfollowing (140Love makes you auto-follow the people they match you with, and you have to manually un-follow those who don’t flip your switch). All in all, however, it creates a fairly thorough lifestyle/values profile of the people you’re matched with, and this information is invaluable in deciding whether or not crafting a clever response to a cutie’s tweets is worth your brain sweat.

The bottom line on Twitter dating

If online dating is like meeting people in a singles bar, twitter dating is like walking down the sidewalk and scanning hotties’ hands for wedding bands. Which is to say: it’s an indirect, flyby sort of approach that won’t get you from point A to B in a hurry. But if you’re interested in meeting other singles and your expectation ends there, the Twitterverse is a great place to strike up casual conversation with like-minds. And really, when it comes right down to it … how long can 140 characters take to write?