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E-mailSocial networking giant Facebook has won a US patent on news feeds or real-time updates. The patent named CEO Mark Zuckerberg as inventor along with other Facebook engineers and product people. It was originally filed in August 2006, before the Facebook news feed launched in September that year.
In an Agence France Presse report, Facebook said "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…We’re humbled by the growth and adoption of News Feed over time and pleased with being awarded the patent."
Facebook's patent, describes a "method for displaying a news feed in a social-network environment," including ‘generating news items’ regarding activities associated with a user of a social-network environment," attaching an ‘informational link’ to at least one of the news items, limiting access to the item to a "predetermined set of viewers," ordering the news items, dynamically limiting the number of items, and displaying the news items.
This development sparked discussions online concern among fans of microblogging site Twitter and other social networking services that prosper on ‘real-time News Feed style or status updates.
Blogger Nick O’Neill said the patent may not be that broad and 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," he said.
Twitter, introduced in 2006, lets people share thoughts or observations at any moment of the day using text messages of 140 characters or less.
According to Twitter analytics team member Kevin Weil, users of the service are creating 50 million of messages or ‘twits’ per day.
The patent could set up legal fights with Twitter and other networking sites as Facebook could file lawsuits to enforce the patent, as posted at AllFacebook.com. The news feed technology is already widespread on other networking sites.
In 2006, Facebook users revolted when news feeds started, calling them ‘stalkerish’. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ultimately posted an apology note to the company blog in response.
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