Do you think Online friends = Friends?

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No, that's my answer. (Not for all cases, but most)

How can you call someone a "friend" if you don't know what they're like in real life ?
Especially when you don't know whether you can get along with them face to face in the real world.

I myself prefer face to face interaction, given the person is a kind and open-hearted person.

You can't receive the necessary love of social interaction from reading online posts.

Wake up people.

Well I don't like a lot of face to face interaction and I don't socialize in real life.

I've had real life "friends" do a lot more bad things to me than anyone online ever did.

If it wasn't for online friends I'd almost never talk to anyone except my mother.

Like in real life, people around you, people you coommunicate with, can be your friends...or no. And the same thing with online friends. I have have some people, who i commuicate online, and who I can really call friends. I think, that it's a it easier for me to find friends online, beacuse such things like eyes contact and voice communication arent so important for me.

I think people have more control over their involvement with online friends. The fact that they are online means that they are likely to cause less stress and pressure than real world freinds as communication is done through typing, no body language to be aware of, its harder for them to make demands on your time etc. Yeah not the same as real world friends but can be friends all the same.

No.

While their posts may indicate a friend-like personality, true friends seem to want to "hang out" and do things together in person.

I agree completely.

I find that pure text communication is too limiting to provide the kind of personal connection needed to form a real friendship.
No offense to all of you, it's the medium we are communicating in that is the problem here.
There is just sooooo much more you learn about a person when you "do things together in person". It's not just the words someone says, but the tones and patterns they are communicated in and the body language behind that that is 90% of human communication. Emoticons & text formatting is a very poor substitute.

I disagree. Silly stuff like body language are pretty much equivalent to filler. It's unimportant in the long run when compared to much more important criteria like morals or ethics or shared interests.

Everyone is an acquaintance in my mind. But I use the words "friends" because I had a bad experience when telling someone that I viewed them as an acquaintance. People don't quite enjoy being called an acquaintance for some reason that I am not sure why.

I would classify an online friend as an actual "friend" after you know the person for a certain amount of time but that's just my opinion. When I say time I'm talking about maybe one year or so. When I say friends, I'm talking about true, close friends.

No, and if you think otherwise you are sorely mistaken.

Well, something worth saying is that you must not limit your interaction with an online friend with texting. With mine we've used skype quite a number of times, we've heard each other live playing piano and even singing (badly), and though I won't claim that hanging out in a MMORPG is equivalent to hanging out in real life, doing stuff together in one of those sure feels like doing something together.

It's just words on a screen.

Yes

I used to, but not anymore. I find it hard to trust people as it is, and then online, it's impossible for me to know if seemingly two (three, four, etc) different people are the same person, even harder to guess at someone's true motivations, etc. etc.

Still, I post things on forums and often somehow think what other people write is relevant But we're not really FRIENDS, see.

Eh. I'm sure I'll drop the internet eventually like I've dropped so many other things

Yes. Even if you only see words and pictures on a screen you still develop an attachment/connection to/with them.
Being friends IRL gives the friendship tangibility, but all the intangible things (like caring for one another, trust etc) are there no matter the realm of friendship, online or off.

Yes, all my friends are online.