[astura]

Yup, same here.

I had to leave my home town for work after getting laid off during the Great Recession. It was supposed to be very temporary, well, turns out it ended up being more permanent than I ever imagined.

I use Facebook to keep in contact with all my hometown friends. On top of that Facebook has allowed me to get back in touch with a childhood friend I haven't seen or heard from in 15+ years and it's also given me a great way to connect to new friends.

One of my best friends now I met once at an event in person, we connected on Facebook, and got talking on there. Now we talk most days over text message and we see each other a couple times a month, sometimes going on trips together. Without Facebook we would have had a single conversation ever. Sure, without Facebook we might have exchanged phone numbers after meeting, except that Facebook lends itself to friction-free low "risk" interactions in the way that phone just doesn't.