Personally, as a gamer, I could care less about these social gathering "stuff" - I just want to jump into the game. GameSpy Arcade is perfectly fine for me.
However (and could this be Sony's second trojan horse?), socializing is huge among the female populace, gamer or not.
Hmm... with this and Singstar, is this what Sony has up its sleeve to widen their demographic? Just a thought...