Writer's Block: Friends and acquaintences
It's sometimes hard to say where one draws the line. An acquaintance might be someone one has met once, at a single course or conference, for example. If you meet them more than once, and keep in touch in between, they are friends. If they have visited your house or stayed overnight, and you have visited them or stayed with them, they are friends. But sometimes one counts as friends people one knows at school or work or university whose homes one has never visited.
But its one of the things that social networking sites never seem to manage to get right -- distinguishing between close friends, friends, acquaintances, close family and extended family. Among acquaintances one might include people one does business with, work colleagues and classmates one doesn't hang out with.