Social Times is one of those cool new social media blogs that just happens to be in Washington, D.C. It is a joint venture by Nick O’Neill and is backed by other prominent goons from the DC market, Frank Gruber and Jesse Thomas. All friends of mine, all respectable bloggers that are each doing great things individually.

One of the writers at Social Times, Anthony Lafauce, wrote an article last week “Social Media… I think we need some time apart“. It was particularly a good article, not because of the literal content of the article, which described his time away at SXSW as a “liberating” time free of Facebook, Twitter and other socnets. Instead, the real meat of this article was in the fact that he highlighted a systemic problem in our internet culture.

I don’t want to sound like an old stodge (cue the jokes about, “Back in my day…”), but society has increasingly lost focus of what is truly valuable – that is the personal and human contact that is not afforded by social media. Yes, increasingly we are aware of the life streams of others, friends or followers. Yes, we like to grab beers and hamburgers while chatting over some new juicy bit of gossip. But we’ve lost, in most cases, the sincerest form of friendship and collaboration that there could ever be. Deep, lasting personal relationships with others where empathetic exchange of laughs and ideas transcend the superficial relationships that social media is so adept at creating.

Over at East Coast Blogging, Jimmy Gardner has taken off on this idea about cementing the community. I point you to a telling comment by my friend Keith Casey where he says something that is the antithesis of what social media mavens try to create with wildfire “friends and followers”:

People who want to get a piece of that are likely to jump in. But what about the opportunity to meet/help complete strangers? To be honest, my friends and allies *always* come first.

So, I concur with Anthony. The ability to shut it all down is great. The ability to connect in the real world and develop strong and solid relationships that will and do transcend into business, collaboration and partnerships is a more compelling effect.

Think on it.