Marie, a friend abroad?

In the previous lecture and lab of Language & Technology, we have got to know about the website Friendsabroad.com. This site enables you to meet people from abroad, to learn and to teach languages.
At first, this seemed as a true enlighment. But I soon realised that Friendsabroad is not as innovative as I thought at first glance. Memories of my childhood sprung to mind. And in this childhood, we had a phenomenon, called "penpals". Through several media, one could reach penpals from all over the world. You could find advertisements in newspapers, join penpal societies or search a pal on the internet. So even when the internet took its first baby steps, it enabled long distance communication for everyone.
During a few months, I had a penpal myself. Her name was Marie and she lived in France. In those days we were limited to simple e-mail traffic, but still I believe I learned quite a lot. Marie was not interested in learning Dutch (Who is, right?), so we corresponded in French and she corrected my mistakes.
I wonder how it would have been if I had met Marie with Friendsabroad. I could have spoken to her, could have chatted with her, could have seen pictures of her. I think Friendsabroad does offer more ground for actual friendship than the classic penpal system. But then again, I wouldn't have met Marie, because she didn't want to learn Dutch...