Social Software

So Esther Dyson was on campus today, I didn't have a chance to go over and watch in person, but I watched the feed on the intranet. She talked a bit about the buzz of "social software" amongst other things. The term "social software" brings to mind sites like Friendster, but what does it mean? People might say it is software that enables people to interact with other people more easily. Doesn't e-mail do this, doesn't IM? Somehow these "old" technologies are not included in set and yet the “new” software powering weblogs is. 

Social software seems to be very much about the revolutionary. Social software seems to carry with it a promise of happier days ahead, about finding that right person, about finding out that a friend of a friend is a captain of industry who's been looking to give you that killer job. It would seem to be software that you want to spend eight hours a day using. It’s the next killer app.

I don't know what it really means. What does it mean to you?