Friendship in the Social networks era

According to a research recently published by Dr Will Reader from Sheffield Hallam University online users say they have about the same number of close friends as the real-life average person. Another research published by by Professor Robin Dunbar at the Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioural Ecology Research Group at Liverpool University has shown that the average person has a social network of around 150 friends, ranging from very close friends to casual acquaintances.
The conclusion from these two researches is that the average person has around 150 friends in real life , I really doubt these fact and I think that the average person has mach more online friends then real-life friends.
Making friends can be costly, according to behavioural ecologists. While it might not be a very romantic view of friendship, making new friends involves an investment by committing time and energy to another person in the hope that they will provide reciprocal benefits in the future.
Dr Reader and his colleagues wondered whether online networks are somehow reducing the investment necessary to make new friends by lowering the perceived risk.
Some 90 per cent of the online friends rated as ‘close’ have been met face-to-face, with the remaining 10 per cent likely to be friends of close friends, perceived as having many of the mutual friend’s attributes and therefore “low risk”.
According to Dr Reader, the importance placed on face-to-face encounters is a result of the necessity to base an investment on honest information.

Read more at: Science Daily