Maybe you should reverse the question. Why has software development always been about productivity? What is it that makes people really happy, being productive or having a rich social life? (Depending on your needs 'rich' may be just that one special person, but still.)
It's funny you use 'a simple web-based address book' as an example, since an address book is kind of a useless tool if it didn't have a purpose: social contacts. In a world where 'everyone' is 'connected' it's only natural to start looking beyond that and look for way of directly connecting the addresses to the actual social contact.
Games aside, we are only now starting to look beyond the mere useful and productive when it comes to software, it's a new and exciting field, with lots yet to be discovered. And as an added bonus it's actually already proving to be useful too.
Maybe the 'social' is being overemphasized right now, but that's only natural. For a lot of software uses there is no real hard separation between the useful and the social, it just wasn't possible to make that direct connection until now.
No offence, but I kind of agree with 'that guy', if the software has a natural social aspect, it isn't really complete without it. It's like a webshop that doesn't allow you to order stuff, just make a printout and take it to the store.
However, the reason everything has been about productivity is because that is the nature of computers, to automate tasks that would be tedious otherwise. This fact hasn't changed, but it seems like no one's addressing the simpler needs before tackling some crazy "It's like facebook, but with movies" startup.
For my address book example, there are always practical matters to consider. Privacy makes the 'social address book' a very tricky proposition. However, the 'address book with a nice interface' just hasn't really been nailed down (to my satisfaction, anyway). It would be hard to argue that such a thing isn't useful or desirable.
Just so there's no pussyfooting here, I'll clarify what my software does, so you can decide whether or not a social aspect is really necessary. It's a web tool that clones the functionality of 'Delicious Library'. It's basically personal inventory software for your media (games, books, movies, etc) and keeping track of who you loan your stuff to. While the capability to browse the libraries of your friends is a given, generalizing that to things like, 'see who else reads the same books' or 'form communities around specific authors' seems a bit of a stretch. Not that they're bad ideas (I wish I had the time to make them happen), but they're really a separate application.
It's funny you use 'a simple web-based address book' as an example, since an address book is kind of a useless tool if it didn't have a purpose: social contacts. In a world where 'everyone' is 'connected' it's only natural to start looking beyond that and look for way of directly connecting the addresses to the actual social contact.
Games aside, we are only now starting to look beyond the mere useful and productive when it comes to software, it's a new and exciting field, with lots yet to be discovered. And as an added bonus it's actually already proving to be useful too.
Maybe the 'social' is being overemphasized right now, but that's only natural. For a lot of software uses there is no real hard separation between the useful and the social, it just wasn't possible to make that direct connection until now.
No offence, but I kind of agree with 'that guy', if the software has a natural social aspect, it isn't really complete without it. It's like a webshop that doesn't allow you to order stuff, just make a printout and take it to the store.