Beginner Guitar Question

Assuming you are not going to really take it past the "minor hobby" level you will definitely want and need to learn tabs.

If you get serious, than learning how to read sheet music as well as musical theory is probably a must.

I feel like tabs can get you pretty far, but at the same time only take you so far.

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Is it important for a beginner to learn how to read TABs?

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While you can learn to play almost anything by watching videos, I recommend that you at least learn tablature and, eventually, music.

Good news is that quality guitar music books often have both.

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What should be my next step? Learning new songs and chords?

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Depends on what you want to do. If you want to play lots of single string lead parts, I would recommend working on exercises that support muscle memory for that, other techniques that will help such as Travis fingerpicking, playing scales with a metronome (and speeding up to the tempo of the song you want to play), etc.

On the other hand, if you want to play rhythm and lots of "sing along songs" - you can't master too many chords - learn as many as you can and as many variants. You'll listen to music and realize that a cat isn't playing quite the right chord, but it works for him and the song. You need those tools to do that.

Good luck and happy playing.

Chords, hands down. Learning a few commonly used chords instantly opens up your song arsenal. Reading chords and lyrics while playing is much more fun than spending however long learning one song and beating it to death.

I think one of the best things to do, is learn chord building.
It makes everything else easier.

At this point, I wouldn't worry about playing any song perfectly, go ahead and learn as many as you can, then you will find that you are improving all around, and its easier to play more of them well.
That's just my opinion.

I think is also good to try and memorize every note on the neck. You will see the pattern pretty quick, that will help you understand a lot of stuff.

Play around with some scales a bit when you are bored too.

Tab can be a help but I think it is much more important to understand chords and know the five or six most important in every key. You need to know how to put those chords into progressions and a little bit of theory behind it. Know how to count the chords based on major scale. For instance a very common progression in folk,country, blues and rock is a I, IV, V progression. In the key of C that would be C, F, G. If you start counting with the first chord of the key then F is the fourth and G the fifth.

You can do the same thing with any key. Just start with the major chord that has the same name as the key and count forward. Then learn as many inversions(ways to make the chord on the guitar) as you can.

Develop your ear. Listen to a song and see if you can feel when the chords change. Then look at your song book or whatever and see if you were right. Even something as simple as tuning your guitar can train your ear to hear the right pitch and tone. You can use an electronic tuner but listen to the sound closely when you get it right and before too long you will be able to do it without the tuner.

i'd like to offer some real advice as a pretty impressive guitar player who has fricked girls as a direct result of said playing, which i can only assume is at least 90% of your sudden inspiration to learn:

lol @ learning sheet music. learn TAB. you'd figure it out real quick anyway b/c nothing is recorded or explained in sheet music for guitar, and if it is, there's TAB directly under it. a good website for song TABS is www.ultimate-guitar.com