A friend can mean different things to different people. To some it just might be someone to hang around with and have fun. To another person it might be someone you can depend on and talk to whenever you need someone. To me a true friend is someone who is fun, trustworthy, and understanding.
One thing that I found to be important to me was being able to have fun together. Even being only 20 I have gone through many different friends. There were many friends who were understanding and I could trust, but I never really had fun with them. I'm a very active person and always like to be having fun, so when I didn't really have anything serious to talk about I wouldn't want to hang out with them. Now I'm more careful when choosing friends that I can be myself and have fun around them, and not get bored.
Another very important factor in a friend is trustworthiness. I like to be able to talk to my friends and tell them what is going on in my life without having to worry about if they are going to tell someone else about it. I personally have had many friends break my trust and I know how much it hurts and affects the friendship. Like the time during freshman year, I was in a fight with one of my friends and in reaction of just being mad said some mean things to one of my close friends thinking that it would be kept between the two of us, and knowing it was only because I was mad. The next day the girl came up to me and started yelling at me about saying mean things behind her back, and of course I knew what she was talking about, but couldn't believe my friend could have done that to me. It took me a while to show her that everyone says things when they are mad and it's not exactly what they really mean but it was just an unnecessary argument. I realized in the process of it all that I couldn't trust my other friend with things like that, and that I should be more careful whom I tell things to.