Actually, I think that the ambient information provided by facebook is incredibly important to maintaining a close relationship. I live 18 hours away from all o

Actually, I think that the ambient information provided by facebook is incredibly important to maintaining a close relationship. I live 18 hours away from all of my family by timezone and almost never use any realtime form of communication with them. Sure I contact my parents mostly by email because they're not big facebook users, but I connect with my siblings mostly through facebook where I can see that my sister is trying a new recipe for dinner, my brother is posting photos of his kids at the park or their latest school project, my other sister is complaining about her first day at a new job, jump in on a conversation between two of them about whether that outfit he wore last night should ever be seen again, etc, as well as emailing them when I want to have a specific conversation. This is what he refers to as "there’s a lessening of perceived distance from that connection. Those six months don’t feel quite as long. And you have a shared déjà vu of general knowledge of what’s happened between you both." If you're looking for serious evidence for this effect, I find support for this theory from the field of remote work and the invisible water cooler effect (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/workplace/bruzzese/story/2012-04-22/remote-workers-can-keep-plugged-in/54423550/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/workplace/bru...) as well as some papers I've read about increased connection through lightweight sharing methods (http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=69311 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6931...).