Christopher Allen supported this definition and traced the core ideas of this concept back through Computer Supported Cooperative or Collaborative Work (CSCW) in the 1990s, Groupware in the 1970s and 1980s, 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.^[17]

The augmentation capabilities of social software were demonstrated in early internet applications for communication such as e-mail, newsgroups, groupware, virtual communities etc. In the current phase of Allen's lifecycle, 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.^{[citation needed]} In the next phase, academic experiments, Social Constructivism and the open source software movement are expected to be notable influences.

Clay Shirky traces the origin of the term "social software" to Eric Drexler's 1987 discussion of "hypertext publishing systems" like the subsequent World Wide Web, and how systems of this kind could support software for public critical discussion, collaborative development, group commitment, and collaborative filtering of content based on voting and rating.[1][2]

Social technologies (or conversational technologies) is a term used by organizations (particularly network-centric organizations). It describes the technology that allows the storage and creation of knowledge through collaborative writing.