The carefully orchestrated proposal involved a string of social media feats that came together to create the ultimate surprise.
Van Horn arranged for a friend of his girlfriend's to bring her to the top of a hill in San Francisco where he was hiding out, behind a rock, with a friend who was capturing the whole thing via Qik. Twitter and Foursquare were used to alert the world, and Van Horn's future bride, that the proposal was about to take place. Qik was leveraged to the stream the proposal so that friends and family could watch it live.
Here's how Van Horn describes the pre-proposal buildup on his blog:
"So I had @hutchins hiding with me behind the rock with his iPhone live streaming the proposal and he also had a camera taking photos. I had sent out the link 30 minutes earlier to both our families, so they were watching live.
Once I got the signal that she was there, I checked into Bernal Heights Park via Foursquare which shouted the URL to the live stream on Qik, which automatically synced to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I knew Lauren received my tweets via text message on her phone, so I asked her to turn around as I proposed!"
Due to Van Horn's tech-minded genius, the proposal will live on the web for eternity. You can watch the touching moment in the video embedded below. Congratulations and best wishes to the newly engaged couple.