Sony let the cart lead the horse on this one.
You don't program a social service for casuals on a $400+ system. You gear that social service to hardcore gamers and later add the casual features as the market expands when your price drops.
Clans, guilds, private message boards, restricted access gathering halls, that's where Sony should have put their effort in Home. Give the hardcore a place to hang out and accomplish something game-related.
I think it can be a full-featured gateway in the future, Sony just got it all backwards to start off. On top of that, it launched way too late, the amount of content is underwhelming, and there's a giant "meh" feeling around the entire project.
When playing around with the service, one ultimately has to ask the question "WTF is the point of this?" and sadly, right now, there's no good answer. I seriously question Sony's competence after watching them blunder through damned near everything from 2005 to present.