All of you web wanderers who think you’ve seen it all, let me tell you about something completely different. Last month my oldest friend, Jacob, turned 25 so I decided to throw him a party to remember. Jacob is sweet and friendly, but he’s also super shy. Despite this shyness, he’s a real social media junkie. In an attempt to bring him out of the web world and assimilated more into real society, I decided to combine both elements and throw him the ultimate social media birthday bash.
The Guest List
I made a list of the friends we had in common and set about rounding up some invitations. I decided to go with quirky invites and scored a great deal by ordering from Storkie. I mailed those to the locals and turned to the Internet to contact people Jacob knew online. From his Facebook page, I sent a general invitation to everyone on his friend list. I knew most were unable to attend so I asked them to send a photo and a short birthday greeting of 25 words or less similar to what they might say to Jacob on Facebook or Twitter.
Décor and Favors
To keep the party relaxed and fun, I chose to go minimalist with the decorations and favors. Along with balloons and streamers, I downloaded images associated with social media sites and had them printed into banners and posters at a local print company. I also ordered an affordable bulk lot of various-sized t-shirts printed with a Facebook status update block containing the words “Happy Birthday” for each guest to wear. To make things even more social media oriented, I ordered a bunch of pin-back buttons that said “friend request” and had everyone wear those as well. The focal point was an enormous poster upon which I had pasted each message Jacob’s online friends had sent to me. Beside the messages, I pasted thumbnail-sized versions of the photos they sent and when I was finished, the whole thing looked like a wall full of Twitter updates
The Food
A caterer friend agreed to handle all the food for the party and when she arrived with a car full of goodies, I was truly impressed. She prepared delicious sandwiches with exotic ingredients and then cut them into rounded squares. With food safe paint, she airbrushed each one with a blue background and added a social media icon in white: A lower case “f” for Facebook, a lower case “t” for Twitter and even the MySpace icon with a three-figure shape. The food was awesome but the cake was a true masterpiece. It was a traditional rectangle with images of Jacob’s Facebook page complete with a profile photo and friend updates. Surrounding this were two dozen bright blue cupcakes with a Twitter bird fashioned from fondant.
The Gifts
I imagined coming up with appropriate gift ideas might be a challenge, but it was easier than I thought. I found several websites which sold Facebook and Twitter items and then I sent the links to everyone on the guest list. Some of the gifts Jacob received included one pair each of Twitter and Facebook sneakers; a few social media icon coffee mugs; several throw pillows featuring Facebook, MySpace and Twitter icons; and a Twitter keychain. One person got him a watch with social media icons in the number positions and another bought him a desk-top gumball machine that tweets.
All in all, it was a fun and successful party. And, in case anyone is wondering, Jacob did promise to try and broaden his social life to include activities outside of the Internet.
Andrea Boley is a writer and blogger. She is always happy to share her passion for life and experiences through her writing.
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Tags: Facebook, social media, Social network, Twitter
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Most of all, of course, I liked the idea about gifts)) It’s very interesting! And I guess you have excellent sense of humor.
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Ha AndreaB, Really amazing gift ideas. I imagine that’s all appropriate resolution to buy preferable gift hampers. Just want to tell my buddies about “Social Media Themed Party”. Thanks girlfriend for your crucial inspiration.
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This party has celebrated in a strange way.Ideas of food preparation is versatile and added more fun and enjoyment in the post.
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Wow.. what a great party planner. You put a lot of thought into this party. What a lucky friend you have. I would love to throw a party for someone like this. It is funny to see that he must have been really into social networking online that you had this idea in the first place. I especially like the gifts that you guys got him. It will be a birthday that he will never forget!
Nice idea, Andrea! I really like how you planned everything with an appropriate social media touch, especially the T-shirts with status updates about birthday greetings, the Facebook cake and most of all, the gifts. Let’s hope Jacob sticks to his promise too!
-Jean
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Thank you all for the kind comments. It was a pretty time consuming party to plan, but after it was all said and done it was totally worth it!
One idea I wanted to do but didnt was to leave the message box blank on the T-shirts so that the guests could write thier own messages on them with black marker. It would have been funny to see what each person wrote!