I think you’re absolutely right. You see in some example how you can find a lot of passive users that are actually known but don’t interact with their feeds on the FriendFeed service. Another problem is how to get the attention of others, liking or commenting and bringing life to the discussion. Sometimes, that active publisher can also lose interest in participating only, and gets out of that realm for that reason. Everything must depend on the willingness and openness attributed to oneself to be able to fulfill the role of the active and followed publisher, as mental enemies are virtually anywhere to destroy the dream invoked by the presence of those technical capabilities. Great article.

By not participating, or using tools like Backtype and Disqus, passive publishers risk losing out on a growing (and interesting) segment of engagement taking place around their content.