Just an idea, but wouldn't simply making a Facebook List of real people fix this? I never actually visit facebook directly, I just have a link directly to a list of people I actually want to communicate with. Better still, recently if you are viewing a list, status updates default to being sent visible ONLY to the members of the list.
The main issue he was describing: news feed overflow; is solved by the list. I'm not so sure what the visibility is of people replying to things you said that were marked visible only to the list. Probably just the list as well, no?
