Today Clay Shirky points to Christopher Allen’s excellent essay on the Tracing the Evolution of Social Software.
Allen discusses the birth of the term ’social software’, which he traced to Clay’s summit on same, in November 2002:
It isn’t until late 2002 that the term ’social software’ came into more common usage, probably due to the efforts of Clay Shirky who organized a “Social Software Summit” in November of 2002. He recalls his first usage of the term to be from approximately April of 2002.
Clay, however, indirectly credits me and Dave Winer for helping him to popularize the term:
Allen probably credits me too much with popularizing the term (it was, ironically, David Winer and Shelley Powers who did most to spread it, by denouncing me and the horse I rode in on, back in 2002.)
Clay is referring to a note that Dave Winer wrote about it, and a couple of follow on posts I did.
In appreciation for his kindness in giving me such credit, I’ve used his original 2002 summit and the follow up writings to begin population of the SocialSoftware page in the Wikipedia for Weblogging, referring to the whole event as the great pancake gathering.
Thanks, Clay!