Don't depend upon your friends for anecdotal evidence

There are people, including myself, who make a point of saying that you control your network. If your Twitter friends are feeding you stupid information, you have no one to blame but yourself. Get new friends.

But while there are sometimes instances in which you should keep people out of your network, you shouldn't make a habit of it.

In the days after the announcement of Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed, I kept on hearing about people in my network who were either reducing their time on FriendFeed, or were quitting FriendFeed altogether.

Well, the numbers are in, so now we can know just how much FriendFeed use declined in August. From Twittercism:

[N]ew Facebook purchase Friendfeed gained a massive 13.75%, moving above the one million unique mark for just the third time in its history, likely because of all the new attention.

Ironically, Facebook use in August declined.

To be fair, the writer (the Twittercist?) wondered whether the FriendFeed use gains would hold up, or whether they were just a blip.

But it just goes to show you that listening to your friends (and I have hundreds of friends on FriendFeed) might not give you the whole picture.