Much has been made of Leo Laporte’s screed against social media. Most intriguing to me is the action Leo is taking in response to the circumstances that motivated the post: giving up on Google Buzz and reactivating his semi-dormant blog.

In his post, titled “Buzz Kill,” TWiT network honcho Leo (of whom I’m a big fan, by the way) chronicles his discovery that none of the posts he made to Google Buzz have gone live since August 6. What distressed him was the fact that nobody noticed his absence:

It makes me feel like everything I???ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I???ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing…Social media, I gave you the best years of my life, but never again. I know where I am wanted. Screw you Google Buzz. You broke my heart.

I’m intrigued because blogs, last time I checked, fell under the social media label, as do podcasts—especially Leo’s shows, which are broadcast live to an audience that interacts with each other and the hosts in a chat room in addition to being available as recordings for subscription. And while you can’t leave a comment on the show notes page, there’s a FriendFeed room where conversations about show content take place.

For what it’s worth, Google reacted quickly, identifying what the company described as a “rare” bug: If any of your Buzz followers deleted their Google accounts, Buzz would automatically stop sending posts to the rest of your followers. Google is working to fix the problem.

Whether that explanation will soothe Leo’s ruffled feathers remains to be seen. By Sunday’s TWiT episode, he had retreated somewhat. In the meantime, reactions to his original post range from strong agreement to claims that Leo has become something of a prima donna. Doug Haslam’s contribution to the conversation makes some good points, notably that you shouldn’t blame the entire social media ecosystem just because one element failed. “If something is not working for you, move on,” Haslam writes.

Indeed. But there’s another important lesson that emerges from Leo’s experience:

If you’re not part of the conversation, you don’t exist.

I’ve heard this from a number of sources. It’s what Jack Holt, senior strategist for new and emerging media, told me when explaining the U.S. Department of Defense’s policy of encouring DoD personnel—from generals at the Pentagon to soldiers in the field—to participate in social media. The DoD is making Facebook, Twitter and other social destinations accessible through its own networks. It’s also what Katie Paine, the PR measurement goddess, has told recent audiences. Katie recounts how she reached out to her Twitter community for laptop recommendations when hers perished. After buying one, she wondered whether Lenovo and Toshiba had gone out of business. After all, nobody responding to her inquiry mentioned their products, which meant she didn’t explore the possibility of buying one.

The fact that nobody noticed Leo’s absence from Buzz isn’t surprising. He attributes this to “a vast echo chamber” in which “everybody is too busy shouting.” While that may be true of some people in some instances, in general it’s not the case.

First, “echo chamber” is a term that’s overused and misused. It refers to situations in which ideas, information or beliefs are amplified and reinforced within an enclosed space. That may have characterized social media once, but any review of the numbers of people engaged in social channels should make it clear that we have moved beyond a closed space.

Second, most people aren’t shouting. They’re sharing.

To be honest, I don’t check my Buzz stream very often. Buzz never really resonated with me. I only have 163 followers on Buzz, compared to nearly 9,000 on Twitter. It’s a no-brainer for me to concentrate my efforts where my followers are. I do cross-post to Buzz occasionally, which is ridiculously easy thanks to TweetDeck, and I’ve set up my tweets to show up on Buzz.

But if Buzz were important to ensuring people were thinking of me, you can be sure I’d pump up my activity there. And you can be damn sure I’d make sure my posts were appearing. These rivers of updates go by pretty quickly. Most people, even celebrities, are not conspicuous by their absence in these channels. As I glance at Buzz right now, this very moment, I see posts from Phil Wolff, Paull Young, Robert Scoble, Dagan Hdnderson, Tac Anderson, Tom Raftery, Chris Abraham, Shonali Burke, Pete Blackshaw, Rex Hammock, Anna Farmery, Todd Defren, Steve Lubetkin, Rob Clark, Irene Koehler, Dan York, Ron Ploof, Chris Brogan and Neville Hobson. I see the headlines, I make a judgment about whether the post would be interesting. I don’t wonder why there’s nothing there from Thomas vanderwal, Jeremiah Owyang, Kami Huyse, Chip Griffin, Guy kawasaki, Jeff Jarvis or even Leo Laporte. What’s there is there. What’s not is not on my radar.

Mark Ragan, who uses Twitter to drive traffic to Ragan Communications content, has this figured out. He schedules tweets throughout the day promoting the same links to ensure that the most number of his followers will likely have seen them. With nearly 20,000 followers, Mark hasn’t alienated anybody with his duplicate posts, most likely because most of them don’t see every tweet, just the ones flying by while they’re looking.

Blogs are different, as are podcasts. You publish once (although you can use Twitter and Buzz and the like to promote the posts). It’s likely to be one of only a few posts you’ll contribute all week. People follow your blog through RSS subscriptions and other means because they’re interested in you. With Twitter and Buzz, it’s more likely that they want to add you to the collective.

Using social media for business is a strategic activity that requires knowing what each channel is good for, noting putting all your money on one horse, and monitoring to make sure what you’re publishing is showing up where it should.

That way, you’ll exist.