Last week, Silicon Alley Insider floated the head-scratching rumor that Microsoft had sold only 500 of its teen-oriented Kin phones since they were launched. This is very hard to believe, so much so that I feel a little weird even making reference to the post.

But after stopping in and browsing at some Verizon Wireless stores today in Microsoft's backyard, I have a better sense for what's happening to the Kin. Setting aside for a moment the question of specific numbers, it's clear that the Kin is not setting the world on fire.

For starters, if I hadn't been looking for the Kin, I might not have known it was there. At each of the Verizon Wireless stores I visited, the Kin did have a dedicated area, measuring a few feet across against the wall. But the area was generally overshadowed by promotional areas for Android devices and other high-end phones sold by the carrier.

And once I found the section, the Kin just didn't come off very well in the stores. Unlike the promotional photos of the device, which are depicted showing vivid pictures of the user's friends, the stock Kins I played with in the Verizon displays seemed somewhat drab and lifeless, not really demonstrating the true potential for the device if I were to buy one and load it up with all my social networking feeds.

One of the best aspects of the Kin is the associated online service known as the "Studio," which backs up and displays content from the phone in a web browser on a computer. But the tiny laptops next to the phones were not a good showcase for that feature at all. At one of the stores, the laptop screen wasn't showing anything.

The Kin really needs something more along the lines of the big, vibrant kiosks that AT&T uses to show off the iPhone in its stores.

But more than that, the salespeople in the stores just didn't seem all that into the device. At $50 and $100, after rebates, the Kin One and Kin Two certainly aren't the highest-margin smartphones in the store, and I'm very clearly not in the target demographic of teens and twenty-somethings, but it would be hard imagine more lackluster sales pitch than what I heard after expressing interest.

For the record, Microsoft declined to comment when I asked about Kin sales volume.

"We have not publicly disclosed sales numbers for KIN phones," a company representative said in a statement. "We will continue to monitor market conditions (as we would with any new product), providing updates when relevant and making adjustments to our strategy as necessary."

After my little retail tour, it's pretty clear where those adjustments should start.