Flickr

Best social software beta launched at ETech has got to be Flickr. Put out into the world by Many-to-Many guestblogger Stewart Butterfield.

Like all great social networking services, you can add your profile and photo, add your friends, click on your friends to see their friends…but…there is actually a point to it.

When you launch the web-based application you get a rich social space. Not a place, but where context is defined by the social interaction. Chat and IM are blended with ridiculously easy photo sharing. As Fotonotes lets groups tell stories with photos, Flickr lets storied interaction be told with photos. Drag and drop a photo into a session to show people what you mean.

The social network creates a whitelist, so you can share baby photos with people you know. Groups are treated as first class objects, so if you want a porn group for your immediate gratification, so be it.

You don’t have to be invited to be part of it.