Mark Zuckerberg, Inventor

theodp writes "Move over, Thomas Edison. Here comes Mark Zuckerberg, inventor extraordinaire. Zuck's still waiting for that elusive first patent to be issued, but take a gander at the Facebook founder's patent application for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary to get an idea of what's in the works. After you check boxes on a form to indicate that 'Everyone from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard' can see your profile, Zuckerberg's 'invention' will miraculously display: 'People from San Francisco, CA, Social Network Provider, and Harvard can see your profile.' How dare Rolling Stone question his inventiveness!"

Comments

Slashdot stories have gotten very sarcastic lately

[Anonymous Coward]

Some deserve it. But I don't read this site for editorials, I read it for some of the scientists and engineers that will comment after the fact.

But this kind of initial submission makes it hard to even read the front page.

What a genius...

[edwebdev]

Maybe Mark should also patent using a database to store information.

Re:What a genius...

[Roy Hobbs]

I'm still waiting on my patent for my public toilet preparation methodology.

Re:What a genius...

[snl2587]

I believe that patent was once held by Honeywell (please correct me if I'm wrong), so, fortunately, that's one area Mark wouldn't be able to get his hands on. Plus the prior art would be ridiculous.

Re:What a genius...

[lottameez]

Is that where you stuff toilet paper in every available gap so that no one can see thru the cracks to see what you are doing? If so, I hate to inform you there's a guy that works at Fannie Mae that has prior art on that one.

Re:What a genius...

[JCSoRocks]

...'cause the prior art on this won't already be ridiculous...

Seriously though - this whole situation is bonkers. Can we just start making people take IQ tests of some sort before being allowed to apply for a patent? Sort of the intellectual equivalent of "must be this tall to ride this ride". Or maybe they just need to add a new department to the USPTO that performs a "Is this completely f***ing retarded" test on all IT patent applications before the rest of the office even sees them.

Re:What a genius...

[homey of my owney]

I... I'm speechless... The man really is a genius... Maybe the rest of us should throw in the towel.

Re:What a genius...

[introspekt.i]

As I am waiting for my patent on my quit-Facebook procedure.

Re:What a genius...

[SiriusStarr]

Ah hell, does that mean I owe you a licensing fee?

Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[darkmeridian]

I read the Rolling Stone article and it was a hoot. All the challengers to Mark Zuckerberg come off as self-important and jealous douchebags.

For example, Aaron Greenspan claims to have invented the concept of an online facebook and is trying to cancel Facebook's trademark. Greenspan dismissed Zuckberg by writing, "Gates was shrewd, calculating and insanely competitive, bordering on autistic. Mark was inarticulate and naive."
Yeah, Mark was so naive he stole your idea and made himself into a billionaire.

There were lots of social networking sites before Facebook. The idea wasn't new. Mark Zuckberg pushes a product that is faster, more reliable, and for a while was less annoying to use than its competitors. His competitors just come off as incredible losers here.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[MikeBabcock]

I don't really understand the view that because someone succeeded they must be smart. This isn't necessarily true at all. Success is often a matter of luck or timing that had nothing to do with skill.

For example, Apple didn't succeed with their Newton handheld but Palm computing did with their Pilot. Most people agree its a case of market timing, even though the Newton was unarguably a more powerful device all-round.

Whether Mark stole an idea or not should be argued on its own merits, whether he succeeded in the resulting application of that theft or not.

People (with money) steal ideas all the time and then hire people to implement it for them leaving true inventors empty handed. Ask the inventor of the Yo-yo how his patent fights against big companies have been for example.

No matter what you were told in school, market forces are NOT fair. They may determine several things, but determining who DESERVES credit or compensation is not one of them.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[darkmeridian]

I agree with you: ruthless capitalism doesn't determine if you're right or not. Mark Zuckerberg may not be a smart dude and his rise to power may not be fair.

However, the critics cited in the Rolling Stone article are saying that Mark Zuckerberg was not a ruthless capitalist, which is plainly ridiculous. I mean, Greenspan said the following about Zuckerberg: "The way he talked, the way he dressed, everything about him screamed immature. He seemed unprofessional. I had run a company since I was 15. It just didn't seem like he got it. That whole persona just didn't impress me." This guy, who ran a company since he was 15, did not approve of Mark Zuckerberg. Yet Zuckerberg is the 24-year old BILLIONAIRE and Greenspan isn't. For Greenspan and the others to trash Zuckerberg's business acumen is the height of stupidity.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[spun]

For Greenspan and the others to trash Zuckerberg's business acumen is the height of stupidity. Really? No one ever succeeded through dumb luck? Success is a guarantee of competence? I suppose the fact that you aren't a billionaire proves you are incompetent? Zuckerberg is a schmuck who lucked out, nothing more.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[Chemisor]

> I don't really understand the view that because someone succeeded they must be smart. This isn't
> necessarily true at all. Success is often a matter of luck or timing that had nothing to do with skill.

It has everything to do with skill. It just not necessarily the skill you have, so it might look like magic to you instead. Could I have invented Facebook, for example? Technically, sure. There's nothing difficult about it; I would probably have even done a better job with the implementation. Why didn't I? Because I don't need it and I can't imagine why it would be useful, and so wouldn't have ever thought of it as a sellable idea. In fact, I still can't understand what all those social networking sites are for. It's not an idea that has any meaning to my generation. Yes, I tried it. I have a MySpace profile. I puttered around the site for a few days and just couldn't figure out what the big fuss was about. It took some serious amount of cultural knowledge to see that this idea would sell. I don't know why it sells, but that's why I'm not the Facebook owner. It is not about luck or timing here. It's about knowing things I do not.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[ThinkComp]

Hi there,

I don't know who you are, but I'm Aaron. So I thought I'd clarify something.

The Rolling Stone article got a lot wrong unfortunately. In my book, which sadly the reporter did not read too closely, I referred to Mark as naive in reference to a specific event: his not knowing A) what Viacom was, B) that MTV was part of it (despite having ambitions to create the next MTV), and C) that Viacom purchased other companies. To me, that seemed to illustrate a certain level of naivete at the time. I'm sure Mark is more familiar with Viacom now, since they offered to buy Facebook long ago.

Also, for the record, Mark is a paper billionaire, not a billionaire yet. I have to give him some credit for that, but when the methods of achieving that kind of success amount to theft and deception on a such a grand scale, it's hard to give too much credit.

You're free to think whatever you want about me, of course, but I did want to make sure that people have their facts straight.

Aaron

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[Lumpy]

There are 3 facts about success.

1 - it about WHO you know and WHO knows you. Having the right network will make you a CEO.

2 - it's all about timing. I dont care how innovative your idea or product is, if it's not the right time for it, it will fail.

3 - Dumb luck. Many successes confound everyone. Twitter for example, what an inane idea, yet people are taking to it like flies.

Being a genius, inventor, or guru means NOTHING. Look at Tesla. he actually invented radio, AC power, and 90% of what we use today. Problem is other turds like Marconi used Tesla's ideas (and patents) to beat him to the patent office. Yet History still shows incorrectly as Marconi as the inventor of radio, even though congress and other bodies overturned the claims and gave it to Tesla. He died a pauper alone in his apartment. Tesla was as smart as Einstein if not smarter. He had bad timing and was did not have the right network.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[Comboman]

For example, Apple didn't succeed with their Newton handheld but Palm computing did with their Pilot. Most people agree its a case of market timing, even though the Newton was unarguably a more powerful device all-round.

While I generally agree with your comment, I don't agree with the example. Palm was not just less powerful than Newton, it was also less power-hungry. The Palm was just powerful enough to do the basic applications that users at that time wanted, which gave them longer battery life, lower weight and smaller size. That is ultimately why it succeeded where Newton failed (that and Newton's poor handwriting recognition). Unfortunately, Palm held onto that "just powerful enough" strategy a little too long, as technology improved and users began demanding more.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[virgil_disgr4ce]

It's interesting that even though you more or less evenly admit that you don't understand why social networking is popular, there's still an implicit disapproval or condemnation of it. That attitude seems to be really popular here on this particular social network.

The bottom line is that new generations bring new attitudes and ideas--I'm sure you know that, but we have to also admit that there's nothing inherently wrong with new and different attitudes. We could certainly decry a lack of enthusiasm for learning and erudition (I know I do), but show me any generation of "youth" in the history of humanity that has displayed that. It's an all-too-common generalization. Slashdot's get-off-my-lawnism ignores this. Every generation will have learnéd scientists and poets, and in every generation they will be a tiny minority.

Zuckerman is neither a scientist nor a poet. He's young. He's young and came up with an idea that appeals to the young. The idea made sense to him and, lo and behold, it makes sense to a whole bunch of people in similar ages (and beyond--my grandma's beginning to see the appeal!).

Let's focus criticism on the implementation, not the audience. For the record, sites like Facebook and MySpace are only useful and entertaining if you have lots of friends and family on the site also (and even then may be of limited use for any given individual).

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[fictionpuss]

but I did want to make sure that people have their facts straight. You must be new here.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[NilObject]

I think a lot of the success of Facebook is attributable to the fact that it was college-only at first. It was a walled garden, which was a huge draw for people who wanted the social networking features without dealing with insane 14-year-olds and 50-year-old perverts. By the time Facebook opened up to both groups, however, college students were too heavily invested in it to be bothered to switch. And there wasn't much else to switch to, really.

I really miss the old days of Facebook, when you updated your profile all the time and joined/created all kinds of crazy groups for goofs. It was a lot of fun back then. Now my entire family has added me as a friend and all my exes reload my profile all day waiting to see if, by chance, I've become a miserable hermit. I can't post a picture without mentally making sure it's ok for my entire extended family and all future potential connections (bosses, etc.)

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[spun]

Luck may play a part, insofar as nobody can really predict with any accuracy the thoughts and actions of millions of whims, but I haven't seen any popular products whose popularity can't actually be explained.

Pet Rocks. Everybody Loves Raymond. Cabbage Patch Kids. Tila Tequila. George W. Bush. Perhaps in hindsight you can explain them, but that is meaningless. Does your explanation provide any predictive power, or does it just fit itself to observed facts?

Sometimes, the only thing that makes a product popular is the fact that it is popular. It's the network effect. Most of the time, when people are free to do what they choose, they choose to imitate other people. Things become popular just because random fluctuations in popularity lead to a runaway feedback loop of imitation.

But Lumpy was talking about luck in general terms. Sometimes people know the right people, have the timing right, even have a good idea, but they still don't get the break. On the other hand, luck can trump everything else. Think of the inventions that were found while looking for something completely different.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[sideshow]

Yet Zuckerberg is the 24-year old BILLIONAIRE and Greenspan isn't.

Billionaire? Really? Is all that money on a piece of paper, or in his bank account?

Until Facebook has (at the very least) an IPO, Zuckerberg isn't a billionaire, he just owns part of an entity that some people believe to be worth billions.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[jstockdale]

Ok. So How about this for a non-self-important, non-jealous, non-douchey response:

Disclaimer: I happen to know many of Mark's friends, as well as having gone to school @ Stanford when Facebook made it's break-through in the beta stages. I've been a member for ages, and seen pretty much everything. I almost tried to work there, but when I interviewed I knew it wasn't the place for me.

Now to go on. Zuck, and Facebook by extension, really do think they know better than their users and everyone else. Their opt-out marketing ploys and from-the-first-day terrible privacy and retention policy's (go to the picture bucket for something you deleted. see it still? yeah, me too.) show their true colors as a data aggregation service.

They managed to create a token service that in exchange for hundreds of dollars of personal information (ie. your contact info is generally accepted as being worth $5. For browsing habits, preferences, etc. go up an order of magnitude), they give you shiny trinkets and a simplified website.

Zuck and many of his friends are more concerned with how they're going to cash out than any social good that they could bring from the service. Time and time again they demonstrate how little they are concerned by the preferences of their users, and believe that huge privacy and datamining fau paux's can be made up for by a well-worded apology (no doubt, written by their writing staff).

Do me a favor, and don't defend him. He doesn't deserve his success, and although he's been lucky, I expect the luck to run out before they sell out for their desired Billions.

In fact, how about this:

I'll put a $5k bounty on a very well written, adaptable Facebook scraper that can transfer all personal information and friends from their platform, to OpenSocial or a platform of my choosing.

Watch Facebook's bottom line once a altruistic company comes along with the same service.

Re:Grapes Taste Bitter To You?

[spun]

Sorry that's how you feel about yourself. Me, I'm exactly as successful as I want to be. And I love successful people, as long as they are decent to others. Its unwarranted success I can't stand. Most of the time that people defend folks like Zuckerberg, its because they know, deep in their hearts, that their success is unwarranted too.

Re:Slashdot stories have gotten very sarcastic lat

[Enoxice]

Did you RTFS? Is your sarcasmometer calibrated incorrectly? And did you read the GP? He wasn't calling Mark Zuckerberg "inventor extraordinaire seriously.

Re:WOW

[morgan_greywolf]

I thought you weren't allowed to get a patent for something that's considered basic functionality?

No, you aren't allowed to patent something that is either prior art (someone else did it first) or obvious to someone skilled in the trade.

This would fall in the latter category. It's obvious that anyone who develops Web sites that you can do dynamic pages, so that means you can do dynamic legal agreements.

Duh.

Sounds like an ACL

[zappa86]

This sounds exactly like an ACL which have been around for awhile. I have many different data elements, I want to only certain people or certain groups, or combinations there of to be able to access it. Hmm, what else could that be? Oh, I know. MySQL can do that do with its permissions table, file systems can do that with ACLs, Apache can do that, hell, if the "data elements" were sockets or ports, even IPTables could do that. PRIOR ART! anyone know what the copyright date of getfacl was?

Re:Sounds like an ACL

[zappa86]

My man page for getfacl says may 2000, which means that its been out long before that. Sorry mark, at least 8 years too late, but more like 38 (hell thats older than you)!

Edison is a pretty good comparison

[MosesJones]

While I know its heresy to say it... Edison did just plain steal a lot of ideas and then pass them off as his own inventions. In fact the lack of global patent protection was a major reason for Edison becoming the person he did, in reality he lived off the inventions of others.

Edison was a patent troll ;)

It isn't about the technology

[Animats]

Facebook is a really good business idea. Technically it's uninteresting, but socially it's brilliant.

It also has more revenue per employee than almost anything else. Facebook, the company, is tiny. For their growth period to a billion-dollar company, they were in a little 3-story building on Litton in Palo Alto, between a yoga studio and a beauty salon. (There something about those few downtown blocks of Palo Alto. PayPal, Facebook, Alta Vista, and a host of other well-known names all started within a three block area. PayPal started above the bike shop. )

Facebook seems to hire based on Facebook. The women coming out of the building are good looking and the guys are hunks.

Re:It isn't about the technology

[eln]

Facebook seems to hire based on Facebook. The women coming out of the building are good looking and the guys are hunks. I think you're confused. The people you're seeing coming out of the building are coming from the yoga studio and the beauty salon. The Facebook employees come and go through the back door under the cover of darkness, like all geeks.

Re:It isn't about the technology

[wild_quinine]

PayPal started above the bike shop. ...and extorted 3.4% every time they sold a bike. Pretty soon, everyone on the street was paying their dues. You know why? Respect.

Re:It isn't about the technology

[Sanity]

It also has more revenue per employee than almost anything else. Facebook, the company, is tiny. For their growth period to a billion-dollar company

You realize that the "billion-dollar" number is a valuation, it doesn't have anything to-do with their revenue. Do you have anything to substantiate your "more revenue per employee" claim? I heard that they were losing money, although they were within an order of magnitude of breaking even (better than you can say for many tech startups). Of course, they've pretty-much saturated their market, and they seem to be having a hard time making it profitable. I also have friends that had some success writing Facebook apps, but now they say that users are tired of those apps and interest in them has collapsed.

Re:It isn't about the technology

[networkconsultant]

Mabye I should apply?

Re:It isn't about the technology

[Animats]

You realize that the "billion-dollar" number is a valuation, it doesn't have anything to-do with their revenue.

Excellent point. They really don't have much of a revenue model, which is very Dot Com 1.0.

PATENT TROLL!

[Jane Q. Public]

I looked at the application and this is about as "obvious" as it gets. It does not even come close to meeting the standards for a patent.

What do you want to bet that the clueless idiots at the PTO actually give this serious consideration?

Mark Zuckerberg, patenter

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please not use interchangeably the words "inventor" and "patenter"? The two terms are orthogonal, and these days they even seem to be negatively correlated.

ConnectU

[thebonafortuna]

If this guy is the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, its no wonder we don't have flying cars.

Re:ConnectU

[DanWS6]

I remember in grade school being taught how great Edison was. What a joke. It's interesting how they don't teach about real inventors such as Tesla.

Re:ConnectU

[hansamurai]

And even when they teach Tesla they ignore his greatest invention, human transportation.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[nine-times]

Seriously, hate the game, i.e. the patent system. It makes a lot of sense for companies to patent everything they possibly can, if only for defensive purposes. If the patent is accepted, cool, you have another patent to sit on. If it's not accepted, oh well, you lost some time and money. There's no real reason not to try to patent any little thought that passes through your mind, no matter how stupid or banal.

There are probably other reasons to hate this guy. Being even somewhat responsible for Facebook is probably enough. But filing for frivolous patents is just the way you do business these days, so nothing to get excited about there. It's just an indication that (in case you haven't figured it out) the patent system is in serious need of reform.

Re:Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Plutonite]

I disagree. First of all:

There's no real reason not to try to patent any little thought that passes through your mind, no matter how stupid or banal. One such reason is to *not* appear stupid or banal, particularly when you're in a field where your endeavors are almost common knowledge to people even without professional training. People who comprise part of your user base, and who will not take stupidity and banality very well. I (and many reasonable citizens of the internet/world) make it a habit to avoid companies whose business models rest on the stupid and the banal.*

There are probably other reasons to hate this guy. Being even somewhat responsible for Facebook is probably enough. ???
Facebook was a beautiful thing, and possibly still is, despite the silly applications. I have met "friends" from middle school, high school.. you name it. And now that we are in random places around the globe it truly is an amazing phenomenon, to wake up in the morning and watch people's lives progress in different environments (and sometimes completely different cultures) without the 14-year-old-girl-atmosphere of other connecting tools. I think he has done a wonderful thing with this, even if by accident.

*disclaimer: I use MS software :)

Re:Did that lawsuit ever get settled?

[slew]

Although there is a rumor going around about a settlement, apparently, at least something is still on-going....

The last entry in June 4, indicates a hearing and exihibits were being submitted so there's a probably a settlement conference on this, but maybe it hit some sort of last minute snag...

Prior Art

[Jason Levine]

This was filed on July 25, 2006. So we need an example of a similar thing from July 25, 2005 or earlier to qualify for prior art. And this is so ridiculously simple that there's got to be some prior art somewhere. I don't think this would qualify since it is on an intranet, but my company's intranet has an internal policy editor that lets users set which affiliates get to see the policy. So if you want Policy X to be seen by A, B, and C, but not D, you check off those checkboxes and click OK. The database stores the permissions and the users searching for policies get the appropriate policies on their screens. I don't remember when we launched that, but I'm sure that it was before 2005. This should be a ridiculously easy patent to find prior art for.

Even Microsoft has prior art on this

[MikeRT]

in the form of the dialog in Windows that allows you to select which users and groups have access to files and folders.

Re:Slashdot stories have gotten very sarcastic lat

[mujadaddy]

Wait, this site has thingies above the comments? Never noticed.

My application

[thatskinnyguy]

With something this obvious being patented, I think I'm going to patent my method of inspiring air in order to convert suspended iron into iron oxide in a liquid medium in order to live. I'll make a mint!

Re:WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

SWEET!
I'm going to patent the door!
All you f***ers are going to be climbing out of windows by the end of the year!

Re:Slashdot stories have gotten very sarcastic lat

[Cairnarvon]

This may surprise you, but kdawson's real name is in fact Keith Dawson.
Who'd have guessed?