In the past year that I’ve been running Work It, Mom! I’ve made more online friends than I ever had before. And I truly do mean friends — people whom I trust, enjoy speaking with, lean on for support. 90% of our interactions are online, although I must say I’ve met each one at least once — I think that makes the friendship more real, in some sense.

When I told my mom that I had this friend whom I’ve only met for about 1/2 hour offline she gave me a very skeptical look. Yeah, right! it said, how can someone you only IM and email with be a true friend. I think for my mom’s generation this is a completely nutty idea — but then, she thinks the fact that I lose my mind when I can’t access email is nutty as well.

I think this idea of online friends — especially online moms friends, whom many of us have met through social networks like Workitmom.com or through blogs or message boards on other sites — is really interesting. And some pretty amazing bloggers are discussing it in the latest episode of Momversation. Momversation is a pretty innovative project, sponsored by Target, in which yours truly is also participating (my first episode, which involves my saying the word sex more than I have ever done in front of strangers, is coming up soon). It’s like a rotating video “conversation” among some pretty rockin’ mom bloggers, all of whom are pretty smart, funny, outspoken women, and I only wish we could find ourselves in the same room at the same time. Instead, one of us starts off the conversation, and each of us shoots our responses at home.

Here’s who’s participating:

• Heather Armstrong of Dooce
• Alice Bradley of Finslippy
• Daphne Brogdon of Cool Mom
• Maggie Mason of Mighty Girl
• Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog
• Rebecca Woolf of Girl’s Gone Child
• Me (no idea how I got invited, but I’m not asking!)

Here’s the latest episode about online friendships:

Do you think online friendships are real? Do you have a lot of online friends?