problem with the_excerpt()

Hi,

At my homepage I have this code:

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=1&showposts=4"); while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
<b><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></b>
				<?php the_excerpt() ?>
			<div style="clear:both;"></div>
				<?php endwhile;?>

And I give the result that I want but when I install the plugin: ‘get Social’, the social media bar appears on every page except at the homepage.
After some debugging I found out that the reason that the social media bar doesn’t show up is: <?php the_excerpt() ?>

I tried some things like: the_content, but than the social media bar comes some where half down the page.

So does anyone know a good alternate for the_excerpt?