Evolving definitions: social software

As [W]web 2.0 has come to represent more of a marketing term than a set of technologies the meaning of social software also seems to be evolving and shifting - one only has to track the additions on wikipedia which are constantly expanding the term.

I have always quite liked:

"Where normal software links to the inner workings of a computer or other network, social software links people to the inner workings of each other’s thoughts feelings and opinions" (Coates and Butterfield, 2002)

... or others might see something in a more recent appraisal of social software from the 'Devil's dictionary' as commented on by Clay Shirky:

"Any arbitrary collection of algorithms, protocols and metadata that allows friendless agoraphobics to pretend otherwise."

One approach to grasping the term is to trace a history of social software, for example see the evolutionary trail that Christopher Allen uncovers starting with a device called a 'memex' conceived in the 1940s.  Yet in many ways one can take simply take the term at face value and perhaps see it not as a hard category but more as zeitgeist - a reflective phrase which merely reflects the current changes in the way that we understand our interactions and connections through the the medium of the Internet. As Tom Coates acknowledges in the subject line of his approach to describing social software ... it is a 'working' definition.