The word "social" has a new meaning since it hitched its wagon to the word "network." You now share yourself, your Facebook status, your YouTube links, and your indispensable thoughts about the season finale of Mad Men in real time and with no more difficult than it takes to say "hello." And part of our willingness to do so is the fact that we can get immediate responses and reactions from friends and family as if they're in the same room.

The bar has been rising when it comes to our expectations of what online interactions should be. And, feeling like we're all in the same room, is the new baseline. That goes for our personal and professional lives. It makes sense that we want all—not just some—of our conversations to be in real time.

We're not just talking about dialogue, of course. We now want, nay expect, photos and videos in our real-time online conversations. Microsoft's Windows Live chat client, Messenger, is a good example of the kind of tool that enables this. It's designed to bridge home/business scenarios and provide a single instant messaging platform for work, play, and anything in between. It does all of this while integrating with the applications that drive social networking on the PC, over the Internet, and through your smartphone.

For a quick demonstration of Messenger, check out this Windows Live Messenger Preview YouTube video by Microsoft's Director of Windows Live Product Management, Dharmesh Mehta.

In the video, Mehta shows off one of Windows Live's main innovations, the fact that it integrates seamlessly with an array of features that used to be separate entities, including video chat and photo sharing. It even has one-click integration with sites like Facebook and Flickr (which we'll detail in an upcoming piece on social network integration).