Eric Melin addresses the Social Media Club of Lawrence at Mirth Cafe, 745 N.H., during a meeting Jan. 26. The group's Twitter handle is @SMCLawrence.

Two years ago, on a cold, snowy day, Ben Smith pulled up a chair in a cafe and waited.

He wasn’t sure anyone would show up, or if he’d recognize them if they did.

Three people came, not knowing each other at all beforehand except through the confines of the social networking site Twitter. That January day, the Lawrence Tweetup was born, and people in Lawrence began to use a formal meeting place and time to jump from the online world to the face-to-face one.

Alissa Sheley visits with members of the Social Media Club of Lawrence.

“You had a group of four people who had never met in person before and likely never would have done, but had crossed paths on Twitter,” says Smith, who runs Social IRL, a new media consulting firm. “We chatted for about two hours and the online-offline gap was bridged. We tried again a month later, and next time more than 30 people turned up.”

There are many ways to get to know friends you may have made online, but one thing’s for sure — meeting in person the first time can be a strange experience. In many ways it’s like meeting up with a pen pal: You get along swimmingly through the written word but aren’t totally sure if that rapor will translate to face-to-face contact.

“Probably the hardest part is wondering if the person is the same offline as they are online,” says Debbi Johanning, who tweets for The Sandbar and The KU Alumni Association. “For the most part, everyone I’ve met online and then met in person has been what I expected, with a few exceptions. Occasionally I’ve run into people who behave one way online, and offline, in person, they are like a totally different person. That can be unsettling.”

Because of that, Johanning says it took her a long time to meet up with anyone she’d met online, even though it’s her job to interact and make connections. In fact, it took urging from a college friend and a chance to meet people on her home turf — The Sandbar, 17 E. Eighth St. — to go.

“I had planned to go to several Tweetups before hosting the one at the Sandbar, and each time I bailed on (my friend) because I was terrified to go meet a bunch of strangers,” she says. “I offered to host the one at the Sandbar thinking I’d feel more comfortable there, and since there’s always people there I know, I’d have an ‘out’ if meeting a bunch of strangers was too scary. I was so silly! It was so much fun, and I tend to be a shy person, but I really enjoyed it. I definitely think it helped to develop a connection online and then meet in person.”

For Brian Fenton, a web programmer, the opposite has proven true for his online friends. He says that says that, for the most part, he’s pretty selective about who he follows on Twitter, and often won’t follow someone until he’s met them in person.

“I started on Twitter to meet more of the programmers/IT folk in Lawrence, but I ended going to more social media-focused gatherings than tech-focused ones. Generally, if I end up having a good conversation with someone I’ll find their handle, and if what they’re saying is funny/interesting/useful I’ll follow them,” Fenton says. “I’m kind of stingy like that in a way, I don’t want really good content to be overshadowed by mediocre content, and I don’t want to have to spend all day reading my Twitter stream just to keep up with it.”

Nancy Baym, associate professor of communication studies at Kansas University, says that sometimes no matter what you talk about online, awkwardness is a fact of life, though there’s not right or wrong way to deal with it.

“You’re not necessarily dealing with a different person, but with a different communication style. That may or may not click for you,” Baym says. “As far as right way or wrong way, (I’m) assuming that we’re talking about people you’ve been back-and-forthing with over Twitter or something innocuous … and we’re not talking about flying to California and leaving your husband to check out the guy you’ve been e-mailing from Match.com or whatever.”

Of course, everyone we talked with said that if you’re going to take a friendship into the face-to-face arena to be smart about it. Pick a public place or a dedicated event, bring someone with you and let someone know where you’re going. Because even though you might think you know the person, sometimes you do end up meeting a stranger. But, most of the time you’ll have a good interaction that was definitely worth having on many levels, says Smith.