Facebook earns patent for news feed, publishes one on application affinity

Facebook earned a patent for its core news feed and published one for prioritizing communication from apps based on how closely users interact with them.
It’s hard to put too much weight into either patent because from a strategic perspective, Facebook would do better financially by prioritizing development on its advertising, metrics and payments offerings, than by pursuing a more litigious strategy of suing other companies. Both patents, which were found by AllFacebook, were also filed a long time ago; one in 2008 and the news feed one in 2006. The company iterates and adapts at a significantly faster pace.
Officially, this is what the news feed patent covers:
“A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.”
The patents reveal a bit about different ways the company could have designed the news feed. In it, many approaches are described. The company could have created a news feed where users ranked the types of activities they wanted to see first, like relationships changes or events at the top.
Instead of just comments or likes, the calls to action under news feed items could have been more intricate, including e-mail prompts or a link to join a group.
According to the patent:
“…an active link may enable the viewing user 101a to download a photo added to the subject user’s 101b photo album, to enroll in a class the subject user 101b has enrolled in, to join a club the subject user 101b has joined, and so forth. In some embodiments, the active link and the informational link may enable the viewing user to perform the same function.”
Initially protested by 10 percent of the social network’s user base, the news feed has become a core part of Facebook’s experience by distributing shared content, status updates and profile changes through social groups.
“The launch of News Feed in 2006 was a pivotal moment in Facebook’s history and changed the way millions of people consumed and discovered information on the site,” said spokesperson Jaime Schopflin. “We’re humbled by the growth and adoption of News Feed over time and pleased with being awarded the patent.” The company hasn’t yet responded to questions on whether it will actively defend the patent.
The second patent covers how to allocate space for communication between applications and users. This was a core problem that the company had tried to solve since the beginning of the platform: developers were overwhelming users with notifications and prompts to use their apps. This technology would have ranked notifications from apps that users regularly interacted with in a positive way, higher than communication from others apps.
The patent might be somewhat moot now that the company is removing app-to-user notifications altogether starting next week. Developers will have to ask for user e-mails directly or request that they bookmark the app inside Facebook.
Tags: Facebook, News Feed, patents
Companies: Facebook