There’s a conversation going on right now regarding social software and its usefulness and, to some extent, its perceived longevity. Ryan Carson really started the discussion by detailing why he doesn’t use any web-based social software, and why he doesn’t expect the concept to truly take off and transform into more viable public-use services. But I found the comments of Mathew Ingram to be instilled with the most vision:

My response would be that worlds change in small ways as well as largeo nes, and I think the social aspect of apps like Flickr and Digg means a lot more than any one of those software services does on its own. Do they take a lot of work? In some cases yes, although my use of del.icio.us is so ingrained into the way I browse that I don’t even notice it anymore, thanks to a Firefox extension, and I couldn’t browse for long — or do my job as quickly or as effectively — if I didn’t have something like it. It’s debatable whether Digg or social bookmarking or any ofthe other social apps are standalone businesses (I would argue in most cases they are not), but what they represent is no less real.

The quality that makes social software so appealing isn’t necessarily how it is being used today, it’s the vision for how it can be used in the future. I use services like Flickr, del.icio.us, blogging software, and digg. I use those services in my Flock browser, which makes the first three on the list completely effortless. My favorites are automagically added to my del.icio.us account, blogging is done through a marvelous built-in interface, and subscribing to a friends’ photostream is a right-click away. This is seamless and integrated functionality, and will only become moreso as time marches on and the software and standards evolve with increased usability and acceptance.

And this is how it works. While the web may be in version 2.0, social software is still version 1. Hell, maybe it’s all still in beta. Or alpha. Or alfalpha. In any case, it’s still in the process of being defined and refined for mass public consumption. Digg is a trial run for a first ever public news aggregation and user-generated news service, where millions of people–not just thousands–will participate in the conversation. It will be controlled by a mass internet media organization such as AOL or Google, and it will be huge. But it won’t happen for a few more years. Give it time, these things need to simmer for a while before boiling over into the mass marketplace. Revolutions tend to eventually become establishments given enough time.

And it won’t just be digg. All social software services we use today–and which we are starting to take for granted as “revolutions becoming establishments“–will evolve into more general public-use services. The stuff we think of as “nifty features” will become standard functionality.

Strike it down if you want, but social software will eventually become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.