Facebook needs a fade-friend application

Now this article makes an extremely good point: (Scott Brown on Facebook Friendonomics) and to cut to the chase it's this: "we've lost our right to lose touch. 'A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature,' Emerson wrote, not bothering to add, 'and like most things natural, friendship is biodegradable.' We scrawl 'Friends Forever' in yearbooks, but we quietly realize, with relief, that some bonds are meant to be shed, like snakeskin or a Showtime subscription. It's nature's way of allowing you to change, adapt, evolve, or devolve as you wish—and freeing you from the exhaustion of multifront friend maintenance. Fine, you can 'Remove Friend,' but what kind of asshole actually does that?"
This is sooooo true. In fact the use of the term friend in facebook has meant a devaluing of the term to cover what really ought be be 'acquaintances'. I've got to the point of distinguishing between 'friends' and 'facebook-friends'. So the solution offered here is very attractive. "A Facebook app we'll call the Fade Utility. Untended Friends would gradually display a sepia cast on the picture, a blurring of the neglected profile—perhaps a coffee stain might appear on it or an unrelated phone number or grocery list. The individual's status updates might fade and get smaller. The user may then choose to notice and reach out to the person in some meaningful way—no pokes! Or they might pretend not to notice. Without making a choice, they could simply let that person go. Would that really be so awful?"
No; it would allow to happen on Facebook what seems to happen in real life; we just lose touch and that's sometimes alright. I'm as interested as the next person in sometimes finding out what happened to old friends and acquaintances, I like Friends Reunited for that. I like being able to renew old acquaintance; but I have noticed in reunions and even facebook, that just a catch-up every so often is sufficient. We aren't 'wired' for indefinite extension of 'meaningful' relationships. It's no coincidence that we tend to work with networks consisting of between 30 and 200 people in total.