Facebook patents the news

SOCIAL NOTWORKING SITE Facebook has been awarded a wide ranging patent for displaying news feeds from social networks.

The patent which was initially filed in August 2006 finally got approved by the US Patent Office earlier this week. It revolves around a news feed being generated from user interactions within the social network; basically a formalisation of what users have been seeing for years now.

It is the news feed a feature that was initially derided by a number of users which, according to Jaime Schopflin speaking to Digitalbeat was a "pivotal moment in Facebook’s history". Back then Facebook was still used by students, primarily in the US. Of course once it allowed non academic email addresses to sign up, user figures shot through the roof.

Other social notworking sites will surely be whipping their patent lawyers into a frenzy trying to find holes in what appears to be a relatively wide ranging patent. One potential causality could be current flavour of the month, Twitter. The patent was originally filed very close to the time Twitter first broke cover in 2006, and it's clear that once logged in, the user gets a similar news feed to that of Facebook.

A second patent has also been granted to Facebook which revolves around the display of notifications from applications. Many of the sites more mature users voiced their annoyance at being bombarded with useless messages from applications that they or their "friends" had installed. The patent details a method of messages prioritisation based on prior interaction between the user and the application.

The second patent shouldn't cause as much distress to others. The whole problem could have been avoided through better system design and Facebook themselves are set to disable application to user notifications unless explicitly allowed by the user in the near future.

It is however the news feed patent that is the greatest cause for concern. For Facebook however, the patent may finally give some credence to its until now, 'unique' revenue generation model and allow it to generate some cash. µ