You could say that about Twitter today; it’s still a small minority of the mainstream population that is on it at all, let alone those who Tweet. But whether i

You could say that about Twitter today; it’s still a small minority of the mainstream population that is on it at all, let alone those who Tweet. But whether it’s IRC, NNTP, Yahoo Chat, LiveJournal, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other online social platform, the practice of finding new acquaintances on the platform then parlaying them into offline professional or personal relationships is not at all unusual. But to your point, early-days Twitter included most people who were into startups, many who were into programming, design, media, even music. Maybe small in number (say, only a few million people) but still significant and influential. I’m conscious that this discussion is essentially becoming a debate over the definition of “typical”, which is rather pointless. The point is that whatever your definition of “typical”, the number of people making offline friends and business connections via Twitter and other online platforms has always been significant.