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NETWORKING ONLINE:Meeting people online doesn't have to mean internet dating - you can expand your social life, widen your circle of friends, and even join an interactive online book club, using networking tools as Twitter, writes Rosemary MacCabe

ONCE A MONTH, in a cafe somewhere in Dublin city centre, a group of people gather together and have lunch. They talk about fashion, to begin with, then they migrate onto related topics – celebrity gossip, television, where the best sales are, and where they’re going on holidays. But theirs is no school reunion; before their first meet-up, a year ago this month, they didn’t know one another except in the most modern of senses: virtually. Their meet-up is for the monthly Fashion Bloggers’ Brunch, the brainchild of Annmarie O’Connor, a freelance stylist and fashion writer for whom the written word was proving somewhat isolating.