Over the past few months I have been an occasional user of Twitter. Then last week while attending the Web Community Forum in Seattle I noticed that practically everyone was using Twitter to communicate with each other. I hadn’t been following any of the chatter on Twitter but there was a fair amount that I was missing out on. I had to join the conversation!

Last week I began using the service on a regular basis and now I have become a regular user. Not only is it a way for tracking what I am up to but it is also a great way for tracking conversations. I’m not quite sure what the phenomenon is that makes us want to Twitter but suddenly I can’t get enough of it. Jeremiah Owyang has pointed out the recent phenomenon.

Just last night I suggested to my roommate that he begin using Twitter as a way for promoting his blog. I honestly hate using the word and feel like the biggest geek for doing so but I can’t stop Twittering! Twitter has become just as addictive for me as Facebook has and that is a big deal. Now the only thing Twitter has left to do is figure out how they are going to make money! If you are on twitter then go follow me. Say hello and I’ll add you back.

Jared Goralnick emailed me a few days ago about a pretty amazing feature that had been added to the Ok Cupid website. Apparently, OK Cupid has decided to let other edit your dating profile. Want to know the real truth about someone? Now you can since their friends will be able to edit it. Thankfully, you must approve any of the changes to your profile. Access is not as unlimited as a brand new wiki page on Wikipedia but it’s a unique concept.

It’s fairly similar to the Honesty Box Facebook application that enables users to anonymously post comments about you. This is definitely a controversial feature for a dating site though. Have a bad date? Go let them know by posting how bad they are for a date. I wouldn’t expect that to get approved though. Conversely, this is a great concept if you have friends that want to help you get a date. They can come and post testimonials about how great a person you are.

Rather than just posting testimonials though you can actually edit the content of their profile. This is a great tool for someone that makes a business off of optimizing dating profiles. Do you think wiki dating is a good idea?

LinkedIn has finally updated their design and interface and have added a brand new developer platform that enables developers to spread the utility of LinkedIn across the web. On my site AllFacebook.com, I previously suggested that Facebook’s grouping features would be the downfall of LinkedIn. That still could be the case given that I have personally added most of my business colleagues as contacts on Facebook. Conversely, I have also added them as contacts on LinkedIn.

So which network ends up on top? Right now LinkedIn only has my business contacts and a few friends that I have engaged in business with. Facebook on the other hand has a collection of business, social and family contacts as well as fans of my AllFacebook blog. Currently I have no way to organize my contacts on Facebook so that means LinkedIn is still the more organized location of my professional contacts.

Eric Eldon states that, “You’ll see connections from friends from other social networks like Myspace and Hi5 show up in LinkedIn.” I’m not quite sure adding my MySpace contacts to LinkedIn is such a great idea. The last thing I want is to pollute the last unpolluted social network that I’m a member of.

One really sweet feature that has been added to this LinkedIn update is via a partnership with Business Week. While reading articles on their site, you can see how you are connected through LinkedIn to the companies and individuals mentioned in each article. That definitely makes the news much more personal. Additionally, LinkedIn has released a newsfeed that mimics Facebook’s newsfeed. I have a feeling that the newsfeed is going to become a standard across all social networks.

Eric Eldon has hyped this up to the biggest launch since the Facebook platform. He may be right but it definitely is not the biggest announcement since Facebook’s platform. The biggest announcement would have to be MySpace’s platform announcement. Whatever similarities and differences LinkedIn and Facebook have, one thing is certain: the battle for leader in professional social networking is far from over.

Friendster is expanding its dominance in Asia by announcing today that they have converted the site into Japanese and Korean. Friendster now is available in five languages: Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and English. As their press release states, “These languages represent 66 percent of the world’s Internet users, or approximately three quarters of a billion Internet users in total.” That’s really impressive.

Whether or not you use Friendster (I sure don’t), Friendster is the 12th largest website on the internet worldwide. Also, they now support more languages than any other social network. While I may sing praises about Facebook on a daily basis on my AllFacebook blog, they have yet to expand into other languages even though they have stated their intention to convert.

The other social networks need to adapt and rapidly add support for multiple languages. As I recall, Myspace has added support for Chinese, but that is the only other language that they support. If you are in the social network space, you need to be focusing on multi-language support.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak with Hooman Radfar, CEO of Clearspring. Hooman gave some insight about how his company is adapting to OpenSocial and where he sees the industry 12 months from now. This is also my first official interview on this site so it would be great to get some feedback about what was done well and what you would like to see next time. If you want to learn more about Clearspring’s widget distribution services, go check out the Clearspring website.

Last week I came to the realization that there was a lot of overlap of Social Times with my AllFacebook blog. The main problem is that so far this has been simply news coverage or my opinion of the social web landscape. Given that this is not a scalable solution, I’ve decided to expand The Social Times through an alternative method. There will be a lot of changes coming to this site.

First up is a significant redesign. Currently, this site resembles the AllFacebook site. Instead I want to differentiate the two brands. The Social Times is going to cover the convergence of social technology, advertising and media. These industries are being tranformed by social technologies and I want to have this site be the single source to go to for full coverage. The second step to realizing this vision is a significant one.

I will be inviting thought leaders from across these three industries (social technology, advertising and media) to contribute to the site occasionally. This model is similar to the Huffington Post which has political leaders, media executives and other general thought leaders contributing to the site. The primary differentiation from the Huffington Post is that this site will be focusing completely on social technology, advertising and media as I have already explained.

When will these changes take place? Over the coming weeks. In addition to the Social Times launch event, I will be hosting events around the country including one that I will soon announce for New York city next month. In the meantime I will continue to cover the social web on this site so that the readers have interesting content while the transition is being made.

If you believe that you are thought leader or are an executive in any of the three industries that I outlined please let me know of your interest to contribute. I have begun to compile a list of highly influential individuals in this space and will soon be inviting those individuals to become contributors. If you would like to participate, let me know! I look forward to continuing to provide you with valuable content. If you have any suggestions, do not hestitate to post them on here.