The development of Web 2.0 technologies has led to the growth of social software tools. These tools have brought a tremendous change in the way students of this generation interact and share information and knowledge. The objective of this paper is to examine the relationships between the prominent social software characteristics (i.e., informal setting, communication, network and community, and user generated content) and the students' knowledge sharing behaviour in Malaysian university context. A total of 322 students from five universities participated in the survey study. Through the analysis, the findings revealed that the four characteristics positively influenced knowledge sharing behaviour of the students. Moreover, the combination of these characteristics can be a good predictor of the students' knowledge sharing behaviour through social software tools. Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.