Originally Posted by BigRod

We actually did BOTH, when we built our network of over 200 hand written blog we did everything we could to hide everything but quickly realized it was easier and we think better just to build unique content on all our sites and have no interlinking.

If your building a network of any size its next to impossible not to leave some footprint.
Google Analytics, Akismet, Domain Whois, Themes, Affiliate Links just to name a few.