I haven't read the article since I honestly don't care about trying to manipulate my "influence", but I've seen friends with 1000+ facebook friends who don't care in the slightest about personal branding and influence and whatnot, so we certainly shouldn't equate "many Fb friends" as an indicator of "slimeball" either (though I've seen those too)

Perhaps you should have read the article. It has nothing to do with manipulating your influence. At all.

As a matter of fact, I'm not purporting that the OP has done so either. :)

I use facebook daily and have around 50, normally when it goes over 50 I know I have to do some pruning. I use facebook to communicate with close personal friends. mostly it's kind of an extra email, I rarely use the feed, and post at most one status update per week.

I have 137, but I use it almost daily. Maybe it's 6 times more, but I guess I use Facebook more than 6 times your time.