Stephanie Sullivan, who might be the first woman to accept a Twitter marriage proposal, at first thought the microblogging service was "ridiculous." Now she uses it all the time to stay in touch with her fiance, Greg Rewis, and says Twitter is an integral part of their long-distance relationship.
"We've been known to twitter to each other when we're in the same room," said Sullivan in an e-mail interview. "Sometimes one of our friends will tweet something like, 'Can you guys just talk out loud? Aren't you in the same house?' But since so much of our time is actually spent apart, we've had to find lots of alternative ways to communicate. Twitter has been a wonderful part of that matrix."
Rewis proposed to Sullivan via Twitter shortly before midnight March 2: "@stefsull - ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?" Sullivan's reply: "@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm... I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I'll say – I'd be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you."
And the rest is, quite possibly, Twitter history in the making.
Sullivan, 46, is the founder of W3Conversions in Wilmington, North Carolina. Rewis, 44, is group manager of "creative solutions evangelism" for Adobe Systems and lives in Phoenix. The net helps keep the couple stay connected when they're apart.
"E-mail, Twitter, Flickr and Skype are the staples of a long-distance relationship – not to mention extraordinarily high cellphone bills!" Sullivan said.
The pair met at various web conferences, and eventually decided to write a book together.
"I'm into CSS and web standards and use Dreamweaver," Sullivan said. "He knows Dreamweaver better than anyone and also has a strong belief in CSS and web standards. The combination seemed irresistible. Not only did a book result, but obviously much, much more."
Their book, Mastering CSS With Dreamweaver CS3, part of New Riders' Voices That Matter series, will be published the first week of April, Sullivan said.
So, how did a total Twitter skeptic come to be possibly the first recipient of a Twitter marriage proposal?
"I looked at Twitter a couple years ago," said Sullivan. "I thought it was ridiculous. Didn't get it at all. Wondered why the heck I should really care what all these people I didn't know were doing right now.
"Of course, I was looking at the main page and didn't understand the whole friends thing. (I've since written a blog post for people that feel the same way and are just starting with Twitter.) It was December of 2006 that I finally signed up, added friends and realized this was my answer to turning off IM most of the time."
Since then, she's been hooked.
Sullivan and Rewis keep in touch by phone and SMS, but she says "it's still nice to see him show up in my timeline with tweets about his dinners, sessions he gave, or how much he misses me, etc. Heh. And even though he initially swore it was the silliest waste of time, he often out-twitters me in an evening."
Now they're not the only ones twittering: Friends are offering congratulatory tweets in light of Rewis' very public proposal.
As for the ceremony, Sullivan says they're looking at getting hitched in "about a year."
"So many friends want to be there, we're considering a conference somewhere," she said. "That or a remote beach with cell service so we can at least Twitter the ceremony."
Photo: Stephanie Sullivan and Greg Rewis attended South by Southwest 2008 a week after their Twitter engagement.
Credit: Greg Rewis
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