[halfdan]

In the purest sense of those two words it was a social way to interact with a network of people?

[vaylian]

That's very fuzzy. What about e-mail? Or the phone network? Or the internet in general? Yes, there can be some social aspects to it. But that by itself does not make it into a social network.

Networks have topologies and paths. The social graph matters on facebook because you get connected to your friend's friends which is a core feature of the platform. This is not the case with chat platforms.