DHAKA: If Facebook were a country, it would be the most populous nation on earth, bigger even than China as nearly 1.4 billion people travel (log in) to Facebook each month to catch up with friends.

That constant use of social media has transformed the nature of friendship in the last 11 years since Facebook was founded, reports the USA Today. According to the report, friendship is no longer strained by the passage of time or long distances.

However, we can track down friends who might otherwise disappear from our lives. We can share new experiences with friends even when we are far apart. And sometimes we forge new bonds on Facebook and other popular social networks.

Perhaps for this reason, for its birthday on Wednesday, the giant social network celebrated friendship on Facebook Stories with stickers, stories and stats.

For example, Facebook looked at how friendships can connect people in distant places by locating cities at least 10,000 kilometers apart that had a higher-than-average number of friend connections between residents.

Among those connected cities are: Glendale, Calif. and Yerevan, Armenia; Silver Spring, Md., and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Westminster, Calif.

Facebook also looked for the longest distance that separates two friends who are from the same hometown. The answer: about 20,000 kilometers.

Two friends originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, are now living 20,005 kilometers apart, one in Wanganui, New Zealand and the other in Talavera de la Reina, Spain. Another pair of friends originally from Da Nang, Vietnam, currently live 19,994 kilometers apart, one in Tam Ky, Vietnam and the other in Lima, Peru.

Nevertheless, the stats came from internal Facebook data for global monthly active users during January.

BDST: 0413 HRS, Feb 06, 2015