After moving around the world numerous times (and having friends who have moved around), I find that my group of friends is a global one. I never have a very big social circle in any one place, but put together I have a large group of friends. Meeting up face to face would be prohibitively costly with the many trans atlantic flights involved. Going on facebook is a way of meeting up and chatting with friends as if we were all in the same coffee shop haning out. I've reconnected with friends from college (and earlier) who I had lost touch with over the years because of frequent moves. International phone calls were just too expensive to keep in touch with everyone. Similarly, FB lets me keep up with family who are spread across two continents and three countries. We can now chat and play games as we would do if we were living in the same neighbourhood, only we save the cost of transatlantic flights and international phone calls. For instance, I now feel like I know my brother much better than I have done in the past 15 years when we were on separate continents and spoke only briefly at Christmas when we both go home.