I reported yesterday that John Gruber of Daring Fireball seemed to have a very reliable source that Microsoft had only sold 503 of their KIN phones before pulling the plug less than two months after its launch. While 503 is an astonishingly low number of handsets to sell, one website called PocketNow did some further investigation on the matter and cleverly discovered Microsoft may have sold well over 503 KINs.

As you may know, Microsoft's KIN phones are directly aimed at those who have a passion for social networking and lifecaster, with a narrow focus on the phones for sharing content and connecting with friends through Facebook, Twitter, and some of Microsoft's significantly less popular Windows Live services. This is where it gets interesting.

There's a rumor being perpetuated by Daring Fireball that Microsoft only sold 503 KIN devices. Many other sites are picking up this posting as though it were true. What I find interesting is that the KIN registers its Facebook app on Facebook, where anybody can actually see the total number of monthly active users of the application. The KIN Facebook app is only available on KIN devices and can only be used by people who have KIN devices. So how many people are actually using KIN devices that are connected to Facebook? 8,810 as of right now.

Sure enough, their story is correct and they followed it up with a screenshot. So, maybe Microsoft did sell more than 503 because there's clearly 8,810 activated KIN phones and those are just on Facebook. If these statistics prove true, that could probably put the number at around 10,000 KIN handsets sold. Still, 10,000 is pretty sad.

Another thing I'd like to add. The fact that 503 devices sold is so low, yet people actually believed it about a product sold from Microsoft doesn't say much for the company at all.