ABSTRACT
Friendships are interpersonal relationships characterized by a high degree of intimacy, interdependence, and relational expectations. An important characteristic is also the sharedness of the perception. Friends provide us with emotional support, and emotional support is an important buffer against stress and contributes to well-being. Many close friendships hold for years or even a lifetime, so people spend usually more time maintaining friendships than building new friendships. People have used media to communicate with others for a long time. With the rise of the Internet, it has become much more common to meet stranger's via media communication. The physical attractiveness of a person is often not visible in computer-mediated communication (CMC). On newer venues, such as social network sites (SNS), people display profile pictures and often hundreds of additional pictures, but in newsgroup groups, chats, and many forums or multi-user dungeons (MUDs), no information about attractiveness is available.
