Over the weekend we began to roll out some new features for the Social Times. This is the beginning of our drive to push out new services for our readers and also help continue the vision of “leveraging social technology to build entrepreneurial communities.” The first feature is a private directory of all active members within local entrepreneurial communities. We are starting in Washington, D.C. to test out the system but I hope that we can begin rolling this out in other cities in the coming weeks.

We will also be adding new features within this private area of the site, all with the goal to help build and promote each of the communities that we become a part of. The goal is to leverage our reach to help gain exposure for the local participants. While we have a number of things planned including hosting events, we first want to perfect the platform that helps connect the communities.

We would like to iterate quickly and incorporate all feedback from users. This will help keep all participants in the loop with what’s going on as well as improve our system so that it benefits all users. We are working hard to make sure we provide you with the best platform for helping connect entrepreneurial communities. If you are in D.C. and want to be part of the beta, send me a direct message via my Twitter account or shoot us an email at contact [at] socialtimes [DoT] com.

Please let us know if you have any feedback, suggestions or comments pertaining to the site. We want to make sure you get the most you can out of this site! Thanks for reading!

Everyday, I get messages from a number of people telling me about the great content that they’ve been reading on this site. This is not meant to brag. The point is that often times that great content is not mine. At least once a day, Anthony LaFauce (who likes to be called Tony) posts an extremely insightful article that sparks discussion. Comments pour in an often times that comment is “Great article Nick!”

While I have plenty of good articles, all too often I am credited for work that is not mine. Perhaps that’s because my photo is on the sidebar of this blog (that’s something I will soon take care of), but the reality is that Anthony takes the cake when it comes to writing on social media. So if you want to thank the writer of the article, first read who the author is. Take a look at the image below:

When you write a comment about the author of the post from now on, first look at who wrote it. Increasingly you are going to see that I’m not the author of the article. While I think my articles may be God’s gift to the earth, the reality is that they aren’t and there are other people that deserve recognition. I will continue to write but so will others so take a look at the author and recognize who wrote the magnificent work of art that is on display

One other thing, Anthony would absolutely love for you to follow him on twitter. Also, while Anthony writes for me on occasion he also manages all my P.R. He can do the same for you! So if you are looking for a master of communications and social media, get in touch with Anthony. He’s the man!

Last week anyone who was anyone was at SXSW, I on the other hand was not. I decided to take the week of fun parties and great networking as a week off from social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Digg, no instant messengers, no form of social media or social news for the whole week.

The good news is I am still alive. The bad news is, well there really isn’t any bad news. I actually found the experience quite liberating. I maintained contacts with friends and business associates, and I even made a few new ones. So why was I frightened about stopping?

I began to see social media like smoking cigarettes. Sure It was a good time, and I had some unique friends who I smoked with… er twittered with, but those friends didn’t abandon me because I quit using social tools or told them I thought social media was bad for me.

The opposite happened. Many of my friends that I connect with through social media did something unheard of, they called me and some even asked to grab lunch just to catch up. Sure I wasn’t connecting to the same volume of people I was reaching the week before, but I was making better connections.

I began to realize some of the odd practices I do because I depend on social media. My biggest fault I found was I don’t pickup the phone as much when I was addicted to social networking. I sometimes let phone calls go to voice mail because I figured I would send them aim message or just reach out to them via Facebook instead of taking the call.

I also noticed I started reading news papers again. This to me was the biggest revelations, how dependent I was on social media for my news. I have several Google Readers set up, I get news stories sent to my Twitter directly and I read articles that people suggest to me via just about every form of social networks, but all the news is the same.

I had entered a closed circle of news and I wasn’t even aware of it. My news intake, while I was reading more articles, had actually become quite limited. I read about the same people doing the same things over and over. This is a very bad habit.

Stopping social networks all together is a little extreme, but my impromptu experiment taught me a few things. I really need to find a new balance with my real world connections and those on social networks.

Have any of you out there tried to limit your social media or social networking in the past? Have any of you noticed some of the problems that being addicted to social networks creates? Let me know.

Earlier this week I wrote on AllFacebook about a piece by Tom Hodgkinson that ultimately accused Facebook of spreading capitalist ideology throughout the world. In writing the piece I began to wonder about the implications of Facebook and privacy. Soon after completing the piece I found an article about the U.S. drafting a plan to allow the government to access any email or web search taking place. Then today Programmable Web published a piece about USASpending.gov’s inherent lack of privacy within their API.

All of these article bring to light the issue of privacy on the web and where the line is drawn. Ultimately, to suggest that there is a clear line on privacy would be ridiculous. It may be better to examine each issue on a case by case basis. Unfortunately I do not have the time to do so and will instead generalize about the topic. If we were to debate the issue in public I would be sure to come more prepared than I am currently in writing this article. Then again I don’t have much of a stance and instead find myself asking a lot of questions.

Is there privacy on the web? There have been reports of large scale surveillance by the government via various communication channels … primarily via telephones. While the telephone companies won’t comment on the issue, the goal of the NSA is to amass as much communication as possible and it appears that it will soon extend to the web.

One of the primary problems with these policies is that it is elected and appointed officials that make privacy decisions for the entire country. While this is the point of a representative democracy, I’m not quite sure that I like the result. In social media, we choose to publish tons of information about ourselves via Twitter and Facebook. There are plenty of things that we prefer to keep private including emails with people that we communicate with on a daily basis.

Will privacy ultimately be decided by the government? What standards have the people set in regards to privacy? Should there be a coalition of people that set forth a general standard on privacy that “the people” support? I don’t have the answers to all these questions but given the rapid growth in technology and the government’s responsibility to make privacy decisions for us, I think there should be some sort of standard set forth by the general public. What do you think?

Back at the beginning of September I discussed my desire to help create a Silicon Valley-like atmosphere here in D.C. Yesterday, I had three meetings with individuals, two of which are currently running their own startup. I will be posting interviews with both of them in the coming weeks. Over the course of the day, one topic seemed to come up in each of my conversations: the rise of a start-up communnity in Washington D.C.

Everyone seemed to think that the primary reason behind D.C. not building a thriving start-up community is that venture capitalists in the area are overwhelmingly conservative. I have to agree with this but it is beginning to change. Sean Greene (who I interviewed last week) and LaunchBox Digital will be just one of the contributors to this. Eric Litman of Washington VC (who I will be interviewing next week) will also be contributing to this as well.

Be confident that there are more to come. One of my own personal missions with the Social Times is to help leverage the site’s technology channel (we will soon add additional channels) to help build a thriving start-up community in D.C. With the rise of things as simple as D.C. Tweetups (I have been to two in the past couple weeks) and other local events, I am confident that it will happen.

I will be hosting an event about “How to Get Funding for Your Startup in D.C.” on February 13th. I haven’t officially announced it yet and haven’t picked a location but be confident that I will be working hard to put together many more events that revolve around building this community. I’m not the only one. People like Jared Goralnick, Justin Thorp, Peter Corbett, Rana Sobhany, Jimmy Gardner, Martin Ringlein, Ann Bernard and the Why Go Solo team, Ross Karchner, Jason Garber, the local VCs, developers, designers and many others (sorry if I didn’t get your name in here … feel free to shout in the comments) are also helping to build this community.

It won’t happen overnight but 2008 is going to be a big year for us. I seriously believe that while there was the rise and fall of the netpreneur era in D.C., it is rising again and I think it is possible to make it permanent this time around. I will host as many events as possible to help contribute and I will continue to post interviews with the people that are help building this community. What are you going to do to help? What’s missing? Can it be done?

Updated Community Contributors
Will Kern
Zvi Band
Jesse Thomas
Brian Williams

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.

Next week I will do my first video interview. On a weekly basis I will be interviewing the individuals that are changing the social web. First up is Hooman Radfar of Clearspring. I’ll let him describe what Clearpring does but I’d like to get some input from the readers about what types of things you’d like to know. A few that I’ve come up are regarding the details of the interviewee’s company and how OpenSocial, Facebook and other influences within the social web are impacting their business.

One other thing that I thought would be interesting is to find out what drives these individuals as entrepreneurs and business leaders. Is this something that you would be interested in hearing about? I want to know what the readers want to learn about. I’m extremely excited about covering this space. If you or your company would like to be featured in an interview, let me know. I’m hoping to cover as many people as possible but unfortunately I can’t cover everyone so please don’t be disappointed if we don’t feature you.

I would appreciate all the feedback that I can get. Thanks!