No one to meet? How about a tweetup?

Some travelers make open calls for coffee or meals with their social-media followers

Is everyone really worth meeting? Here’s one way to find out: Next time you are alone in a strange city, post an open invitation on Twitter and see who shows up.

For some hyper-networking travelers, rallying a last-minute dinner guest or a drinking buddy through open calls on social media is a favorite method of avoiding lonely time. Take Peter Shankman, an author and entrepreneur who has sold two online networking businesses in the past 10 years. He has long been sending such invitations from airports, hotel bars, coffeehouses, yogurt shops, even a highway in Arizona.

“About to drive from Phoenix to San Diego on I 8,” he tweeted in October to his followers, then numbering 165,000. “If anyone is along that route and wants to meet for a coffee, let me know.”

An hour later, Shankman was in a Starbucks in Yuma, Ariz., sitting next to Aliza Sherman, an author and media consultant, and a man who called himself Johnny Awesome. Shankman left with the promise that his guests would give him a book signing the next time he was in town.

His conclusion? Good meeting.

“As I see it, you meet everyone you can because you never know what’s going to happen down the road,” he said. “Everyone you meet, everyone you talk to, you should be networking. You’re not necessarily looking for business, but if you have the opportunity to meet someone and say, ‘Hi,’ why wouldn’t you?”

Back in the earlier, more intimate days of social media, getting together in real life with a group of Twitter friends was known as a tweetup. Today the term has fallen out of fashion. But for a small group of gregarious professionals, the practice has not,