What a shortsighted post. Twitter and Facebook are of course not a substitute for blogging. They are a means for promoting your blog (and other) content.

To give them up is to give up a potential source of highly targeted blog traffic.

Bet he gets back on one day if/when he realizes what he's missing in that respect.

While I agree with Jill about increasing your content curation efforts and true reach, the other side of this discussion is this: if you're not putting in the effort to engage your audience in any given network, is it really worth it?

When you look at abandonment rates for social media platforms, I can understand why people give up on certain ones rather than having former shells of an effort lingering around.  It's best to focus on your favorite networks and distribution channels.  It's also better to focus where you are most engaged, rather than trying to be everywhere (believe me, the latter can be stressful at times).

Do you need to have Facebook or even Twitter to build a highly-engaged audience?  Not at all.  Does it help greatly.  You betcha!

Of course,  I do not say this to be dismissive to either of you.

It may be worth noting that this notion of digital sharecropping that has been pushed by Copyblogger and other industry leaders does not tell the full story.  They already have built up their audiences and have their own native, loyal community so they can afford to kill off a point of presence.  That said, is owning the content as important as being able to get it out to more people, the right people?

If you're worried about intellectual property issues, don't syndicate the original article.  Instead, share abstracts and reviews to gain quality backlinks and pique interest.

Really, I don't see how that is NOT a mutually beneficial situation for everyone?  It adds value across the board...

Hope that sheds some light on the subject!