It kind of says a lot for the influence of Facebook where suggesting that perhaps you shoot an email to a friend seems like an impractical thing to do.
It's nothing to do with "the influence of Facebook", it's to do with progress in usability and use case.
If you just want to send a message to a friend then there are a myriad of ways to do that which neither involve email nor Facebook.
If you boil it down to why people actually use Facebook, then Facebook is nothing but a fancier and comfortable version of "keeping a list of emails", just with very nasty side-effects.
Are they real friends though if you only talk to them on the phone? I keep in touch with my friends in person by going to their door and knocking. Real friends that is.
Friends since the 80s, have kept in touch all that time, live >1000 miles away. Real friends are those people with whom you can be yourself, who understand what you don't say as well as they understand what you do say.
