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Facebook Patents the News Feed
daedae writes "It seems Facebook has been granted a patent for the news feed, as a method of monitoring activities, storing them in a database, and displaying an appropriate set of activities to an appropriate set of users. 'That sounds pretty broad, and the social-networking world was all atwitter at the possible ramifications. Writing for ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick proclaimed, "This could be very big. ... MySpace, Flickr, Yahoo, Twitter (?), the sharing part of Google Reader, and even Google Buzz — do all of these sites have technology at the center of their social experiences that falls under this new patent of Facebook's?" The patent may not be that broad. Nick O'Neill at the All Facebook blog wrote that the patent doesn't appear to cover status updates as used by Twitter. "It appears that this patent surrounds implicit actions. This means status updates, which is what Twitter is based on, are not part of this patent. ... Instead, this is about stories about the actions of a user's friends. While still significant, the implications for competing social networks may be less substantial," O'Neill wrote.'"
Since when has prior work stopped someone from getting a patent?
The USPO is getting lazy. There is quite a few examples of prior art which would extinguish this useless patent, namely Google News.
If its patented and only usable by one company the idea of everyone aware of the actions of the friends of your friends, then that privacy nightmare will became unpopular.
They used open-source code, namely JavaScript, which is open and free and created a process by leveraging existing technology
more importantly they created a process that others had also already created. every corporate intranet i've built since 1999 has had similar functionality.
As a minimum Google Buzz and Twitter strike me as clearly violating this patent.
Facebook would probably not try to exercise this patent outside of their narrow sphere. The problem comes when they sell this to some patent troll who uses it to try to shut down the next big thing that comes along.
Combined with a couple dozen different patents it presents the appearance of an insurmountable roadblock, even if several of the pieces are fluff patents.
Even if we can't knock some sense into the patent office and expect them to find every existing example, we can extract a pound of flesh from those that apply for patents already in common usage, by imposing mind numbingly sever financial penalties for failing to mention and dispose of existing art in common usage at the time of application.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They used open-source code, namely JavaScript, which is open and free and created a process by leveraging existing technology.
While I think the patent in question (and virtually all software patents) is bullshit, this part of the argument above is utterly absurd.
Even the most legitimate patents trivially fall into this category of things developed using other things that already exist by leveraging existing technology.
>> As a minimum Google Buzz and Twitter strike me
>> as clearly violating this patent.
Where does Buzz or Twitter automatically generate news items based on the activities of other users and include a link so that you can also participate in those activities?
This basically patents the part I hate the most about Facebook. Stupid updates about people feeding the Aquarium Fish or playing Mafia Wars and a link so you can play, too. If this stops other social media sites/apps from adding these stupid games and just sticking to status updates, links, pictures, etc., I'm all for it. I'll switch to one of them, eventually.
-John
That's because ideas in your mind are sorted by category and relation to other ideas. If ideas in your mind were sorted by which friend they're releavnt to, then Facebook would appear to you to be a perfect and unequaled model of organizational purity.
Now, think about how a 16-year-old girl's mind works.