I think its normal (from what I've seen) for people to build friendships online, its just for me its not really possible if we've never met (although even meeting it still can be difficult to view someone as a friend), I cant process emotions through text (i notice them just dont feel them )and I generally just don't connect with people in text form (this goes for my friends I have irl too but I can counter act that by seeing them in person) hence I can't really consider online people as friends really.
Im mainly a face to face conversation sort of person. The only way in fact that me and my Dutch friend became friends properly besides talking on skype voice and cam chats fot like 6 months almost everyday was us meeting and it being the same as if were skyping, 100% honesty either side with our personalities really, which is lucky for us
as very often people withhold certain things of their personalities or pretend to be who they want to be rather than who they are.
I like seeing the whole picture of someone rather than snippets I suppose.