Google Patenting 'Exponential' Friend Spamming

theodp writes "'The web is better when it's social,' declared Google as it unveiled its OpenSocial initiative. Sounds great, right? Well, maybe not so much, unless you're keen on giving companies the capability to 'exponentially' bombard you with advertising across all of your social networking sites. On Thursday, the USPTO published Google's patent application for Propagating Promotional Information on a Social Network, which the search giant explains 'generally relates to creating and providing promotional information (e.g., advertising, public service announcements, etc.) to users of a social network (e.g., FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, ORKUT, LINKEDIN, TWITTER, etc.).' By doing so 'across multiple social networks,' Google adds, 'the impact of the other promotional information may exponentially expand to other users of a social network."

Comments

I don't understand

[oldspewey]

I really don't understand what's being proposed here ... but then I guess that's probably okay just as long as I buy more pointless shit as a result.

Re:I don't understand

[Monkeedude1212]

Then you have not kept up with how "targeted ads" work at all.

The "Search" part of it is actually the most minimal part of it. Merely by mentioning "Video Games" in my Likes on Facebook, and using it at my home computer, I'd now opened myself up to Adservers to track my IP, and give me endless ads for World of Warcraft.

Basically, they want to know you better by using social networking to track who your friends are and what their interests are, because friends usually share similar interests.

Sure, I might not SAY I'm a big fan of Ping Pong, but if I happen to hang out with a bunch of people who say they are, and have them on a social network's friend list, than Google might show an ad for it every odd once in a while to see if I bite.

Good luck with that

[Yvan256]

This is Slashdot. We have no friends!

Re:Good luck with that

[Monkeedude1212]

I feel it's not often enough that WE point out the obvious oddity that WE all can Identify together and laugh at the jokes WE share, even put each other on a friend/foe list, But the underlying meme WE all keep coming back to is WE have no friends!

You can call it super lame and totally laugh at me, but there are a few people on here that I barely even interact with that I would consider myself a "Friend" with even if it isn't mutual.

For example, I would be thrilled to bump into Eldavojohn at a conference and actually hold a lengthy conversation in person, as opposed to the current standard of writing out 5 paragraph posts to completely convey a message in a manner that removes any uncertainty. And sometimes Pojut makes me laugh and I know that if we were in front of each other we could probably keep a joke going long enough to create an inside joke that no one else would get later on. I could go on but I think I've reached the point:

While we have no friends, at least we're having fun together!

And Happy New Years. Yes I've already started drinking.

Say goodbye to bandwidth!

[Drakkenmensch]

This is how the internet ends. Not with government censorship or technological breakdown, but with corporate sponsored spam suffocation.

Re:Say goodbye to bandwidth!

[Riceballsan]

Well I do have to say a bit of disagreement on bandwidth suffocation. Whether you like or hate google you do have to admit their philosophies saved bandwidth and lowered suffocation. Before google started getting big, the general philosophies of advertisers was, OK nobodies clicking our ads, make them bigger make them louder, prevent access to the page until they have aired

Google started focusing on the idea, No matter how loud you scream it or how much you force them to watch, a 21 year old single man isn't likely to be interested in tampons, and thus google focused on smaller text only advertisements that focused on relavance to the target instead of flashyness

Now avoiding being labeled a google fanboy, this change in philosophy came at a price, relevant ads revolve around knowing as much about the person as possible, and thus, tracking, monitoring etc...

In my opinion I myself would rather google have the pattent on this ability then say a company with the old style of thought, flash ads etc...

In the end there are 3 choices for the internet to carry on
1. Dealing with loud obnoxious advertisements with no real target audience beyond what page they are on
2. Dealing with small quiet advertisements that track everything they possibly can about you
3. More sites go paywall and charge for accessing their content.

Much like the expression, fast cheap and quality pick 2
Private, free and non-advertisement flooded pick 2

Good.

[Ant P.]

Now that they've patented it, all the other big players won't be able to do it and it'll be easier to adblock from one central origin.

Prior art: Shampoo

[Jay L]

There once was a shampoo that somebody liked. And she told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Re:Prior art: Shampoo

[ScrewMaster]

There once was a shampoo that somebody liked. And she told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on.

I think it's more like, "And she told two friends the first day, and they all told two friends the second day, and they all told two friends the third day ..." Next thing you know, there are more ads than grains of sand in the Universe.

Re:Patenting the ability to advertise in ________

[plover]

Hell with business strategy, here is a great end-user strategy for cutting spam!

If anybody spams you on your social sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever), just send a letter to Google and say "this guy is violating your patents, if you want to keep your patent, you better cease-and-desist them."

Then hold them to it. If you notify Google of people violating their patent, and they do nothing and you record the fact, then their patent can be thrown out in court.

Don't read too much into a patent

[91degrees]

Patenting something just means it's an idea someone came up with. A patent is cheap and it may just be something to use in the future in case they need to defend themselves.

Give them the benefit of the doubt until they actually consider using this.

Re:Don't read too much into a patent

[ScrewMaster]

Patenting something just means it's an idea someone came up with.

Unfortunately, that is now true. It didn't used to be that way, of course ... you were not patenting an idea, a concept, something completely nebulous and fundamentally useless, you were patenting an implementation of that idea, something concrete, something of value in the real world.

But our rather well-paid and not particularly intelligent or honest Congress finished that.

Re:"promotional information" - were did we go wron

[hedwards]

The brokenness was that for a small network it doesn't take much to keep it running, but with a huge network it costs a lot of money. You pay your ISP for access, but somebody on the other end has to pay to provide the other bit of service. For P2P type things that other party is paying their ISP, but for services like slashdot, somebody has to cover the bandwidth and various other costs.

Bad Summary - Advertising is not spam

[TMarvelous]

Say what you want about tracking cookies and retargeting techniques but this story has nothing to do with spam. They seem to have patented a way to server advertising to users across many social networks which could then expose those adds to friends and friends of friends of the user who first sees the ad. This isn't much different than all of your friends seeing that you have "liked" a page on facebook. Marketers bank on the hope that some of the people who see what you have just "liked" will follow the link and possibly connect with their page as well. It's voluntary and opt-in and pretty unobtrusive. I don't see what about this Google concept is different from that.

Show your money wisdom, Slashdot!

[Dystopian Rebel]

Slashdotters, now is your chance to direct my investment portfolio.

I misjudged the iPod ("It's crap!" I said).

I misjudged Netbooks ("They are too small, Windows Home is crap and the Atom is rubbish!" I said).

I misjudged the iPad ("C'mon, it's not really Magical!" I said.

I missed my chance to buy Goldman Sachs stock ("C'mon, people are not *that* stupid!" I said.)

Well, it's the end of a decade and the numbers are in: I am an idiot. Years of my trying have proven that I am a failure at investing. Perhaps randomly selected, total strangers who have no reason to like me will do as well or better with my money.

So tell me, ye wiser creatures, how can I make big gains from the growing stupidity of Social Networking?

Re:Show your money wisdom, Slashdot!

[Nyder]

So tell me, ye wiser creatures, how can I make big gains from the growing stupidity of Social Networking?

Ponzi scams?