The term Social Software has acquired two meanings. In its most common usage, social software means a range of software programs, often web-based. The programs allow users to interact and share data with other users. However, there is also another meaning, the procedures of society carried out by people since before computers existed. Both computers and human beings carry out procedures, but not all are for social purposes. See Social procedure and Social software (social procedure).

Social software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data. This computer-mediated communication has become very popular with social sites like MySpace and Facebook, media sites like Flickr and YouTube, and commercial sites like Amazon.com and eBay. Many of these applications share characteristics like open APIs, service oriented design, and the ability to upload data and media. The terms Web 2.0 and (for large-business applications) Enterprise 2.0 are also used to describe this style of software.

The more specific term collaborative software applies to cooperative information sharing systems, and is usually narrowly applied to the software that enables collaborative work functions. Distinctions among usage of the terms "social", "trusted", and "collaborative" are in the applications or uses, not the tools themselves, although there are some tools that are only rarely used for work collaboration.

Social technologies or Conversational technologies used in organizations, in particular a network-centric organization, are other terms used to describe knowledge creation and storage that is carried out through collaborative writing. Constructivist learning theorists such as Vygotsky; Leidner & Jarvenpaa explained that the process of expressing knowledge aids its creation and conversations benefits the refinement of knowledge. Conversational KM fulfills this purpose because conversations, e.g. questions and answers, become the source of relevant knowledge in the organization. Conversational technologies are seen as tools to support work units and the individual knowledge worker.

Many advocates of using these tools believe (and actively argue or assume) that they create actual communities, and have adopted the term "online communities" to describe the resulting social structures.

History

Christopher Allen supports this definition and traces the core ideas of this concept back through Computer Supported Cooperative or Collaborative Work (CSCW) in the 1990s, Groupware in the 1970s and 80s, to Englebart's “augmentation” (1960s) and Bush's “Memex” (1940s). Although he identifies a “lifecycle” to this terminology that appears to reemerge each decade in a different form, this does not necessarily mean that social software is simply old wine in new bottles.Fact: date=April 2008

Early manifestations of social software in early Internet apps for communication and collaboration such as email, newsgroups, groupware, virtual communities and the like and point out its augmentation capabilities. In the next phase, influences of academic experiments, Social Constructivism, and the open source software movement. In the current phase, these collaborative tools add a capability “that aggregates the actions of networked users”. This points to a powerful dynamic that distinguishes social software from other group collaboration tools and as a component of Web 2.0 technology. Capabilities for content and behavior aggregation and redistribution present some of the more important potentials of this media.Fact: date=April 2008