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Egobloggers Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble as well as startup PR clearinghouse Michael Arrington all want to know: How amazing is it that after two years of using Twitter, they've each already got nearly half as many "followers" on FriendFeed after just a few months? Asking the question, each offer hypothetical answers involving the social-network aggregator's ease of use — "The comment systems is so fast and easy that it's perfect," says Calacanis — or Twitter's frequent outages — "Twitter downtime plays a big part," writes Arrington. But here's the real answer to the amazing growth these bloggers have seen on FriendFeed:

It's not that amazing. As CenterNetwork's Allen Stern first pointed out, each time a new user signs up for FriendFeed, the site suggests the new user becomes friends with "Popular FriendFeeders." On the list: Bret Taylor, Fred Wilson, Scott Beale, Michael Arrington, Loic Le Meur, Jason Calacanis, Dave Winer and Leo Laporte — despite, as Stern notes, the fact that many of these "popular" users don't actually use FriendFeed very often. Why? We haven't asked anybody at FriendFeed because the answer is obvious: So that the whole bunch of easily ego-fluffed blog blowhards will blog about how amazing FriendFeed is, without bothering to figure out why, exactly, it seems to be growing so much faster for them than everybody else.

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