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Facebook’s most popular feature, News Feed, has been patented thus locking in the Intellectual Property Rights. This popular feature shows a member’s activities, to those allowed to view it, across the site.

Kenneth Corbin reports in his Internetnews.com article entitled Facebook Lands Patent for News Feed that facebook described the feature in its patent application as follows:

“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 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.”

There have been numerous privacy concerns and protests from members regarding how much of one’s activities could be broadcast on the site. However, these privacy protests have waned as other social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn have imitated the feature.

So what are the ramifications? With the granting of the patent, Facebook may now sue any social networking site that includes an algorithm-driven mechanism for sharing and distributing information.

In a related Reuters’ story Military Allows Twitter, Other Social Media:

The Pentagon announced on Friday it has authorized the use Twitter, Facebook and other so-called "Web 2.0" sites across the U.S. military, saying the benefits of social media outweighed security concerns.

The decision, which comes at a time of growing concern over cyber-security, applies only to the military's non-classified network.

"The purpose of the policy is to recognize that we need to take advantage of these Internet-based capabilities. These Web 2.0 tools need to be part of what we use," David Wennergren, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, told Reuters.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 66, has said that he wants to use social networking to help the Pentagon interact with U.S. military members, many of whom are in their early 20s.

But opponents have cited the risks of information leaks, of opening gateways to hackers, along with a potential overload of precious bandwidth on the Defense Department's network.

Training people so they know what can and cannot be disclosed on the Internet is a more effective policy than simply banning use of social media on work computers, he said.

"So part of this is about having a trained workforce that is savvy in how you operate in the information age."

Copyright 2010 Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Did somebody famous ever say “We won’t know where we are going until we know where we’ve been”? I did a quick Google search and could not come up with this quote being attributed to any person. If somebody did say this, then I’m borrowing the line for this posting. If not, then feel free to use it (but mention my name please). As my regular readers can imagine, I’ve been gone for about 3 weeks simply due to a very busy fourth quarter/year-end close. While scanning the internet recently for interesting and important information to bring to your attention, I stumbled upon a very interesting and thought provoking article in Internetnews.com by Kenneth Corbin entitled The 10 Most Important Social and Digital Media Developments of 2009. As I have stated in the past, I am a bit of a History Buff (What’s a Buff? See definition 2; enthusiastic, yes; knowledgeable, maybe). So I like to know the background of why things are as they are; and so I think it is nice to know what has happened in the past relating to technology in order to get a better understanding of where we may end up in the technological future. Corbin’s article is a gem. It informed me more fully of things I might have heard but should know more about. It reminded me of things that happened and how society dealt with it. It made me laugh (e.g. someone threatened to kill their cat if Miley Cyrus did not reinstate her Twitter account – really). And it made me wonder about the future. Here is a brief synopsis of Corbin’s Top Ten List peppered with my editorial comments. I hope I can do it justice:

#10.       Amazon.com’s Kindle will change the world: I read somewhere that the Invention that changed the world was the printing press. Well move over Gutenberg, the Kindle has arrived. In 2009 Amazon sold more digital books than printed editions. This e-reader will change the world. For an interesting take and a more in-depth analysis see Don Reisinger article entitled The Most Important Tech Product Is the Kindle, Not the iPhone.

#9.          Craigslist Killer: Some med student solicited an escort off of Craigslist and murdered her. The story was sensationalized due to the use of this new technology. As Corbin correctly points out, this story would have not garnered the attention that it did if the escort was solicited from the many personal ads or from the too numerous to mention yellow page advertisements.

#8.          Social Networking Sites Made Money: Facebook and Twitter, both a free service to their customer base of MILLIONS (yes I’m shouting MILLIONS) managed to figure out a way to make money. Facebook does it through advertising and the sale of virtual products; and Twitter did it by licensing the ability to add real-time content to Search Engines Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

#7.          Social Media in the Government: Is this a good thing? I don’t know. The Obama Administration seems to think so. They’ve done weekly addresses to the nation on YouTube and hosted online town hall meetings. There are numerous government websites and blogs.

#6.          The slow death of the Newspaper: Is this really happening? Are we really getting more (or most) of our news from the internet? What will the new business model turn out to be? Dare I say, do we need yet another industry bailed out?

#5.          Miley Cyrus deletes Twitter account: I honestly do not understand this phenomenon. Apparently there are millions of fans of all sorts of celebrities and Star Athletes that are interested in knowing and these Celebs/Sport Stars are interested in tweeting what they may be doing most hours of the day. Is this the downfall of our society? Well, it is at least another reason for it. Oh how I long for much calmer days and “Home Tweet Home”.

#4.          Social Web becomes target for hackers: Why do they do it? I don’t know. Some do it for the thrill of the “hack” and some are out to steal our identity. We put too much personal stuff on these social sites. Regulators and privacy advocates have fertile ground for their causes and activities.

#3.          The Twitter revolution in Iran: In June of the last year as Iranian authorities were cracking down on protestors, these same protestors began to twitter their cause, and when the foreign correspondents were thrown out, became the only source of hard data on what was really happening in the country. Corbin reports that the US State Department convinced the people at Twitter to postpone a planned power outage for scheduled maintenance just so they would keep the twitter lines of communication open.

#2.          The growing sense of urgency about information:  It seems that everything is about immediacy. We’ve got to have it real-time. 

And the #1 important issue that materialized last year relating to Social and Digital Media was VIDEO: The web is free and on-demand. How does one derive a business model out of that? TV Everywhere offers paying subscribers the option to watch content on the web. Hulu pulls content from sites, and its owner News Corp is thinking about making it a paid site. So is free TV over the air waves supported by its advertising (i.e. commercials) a thing of the past?

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If you read Mike Elgan’s article in InternetNews.com, Get Ready for Microsoft’s Big Comeback, you will see that the answer is yes. If the Tech Industry doesn’t have any bailout money foisted upon it, much unlike our banking industry, then this market will do what all markets do in a capitalistic system, i.e. only the strong will survive. That is really what an efficient marketplace does with its competitors. But enough about me griping about the impending fascist state of this administration and in particular the all powerful Timothy Geithner. Let’s get back to Microsoft. Read Elgan’s article. He foresees the impending shakeout in the Tech industry and recognizes that the weak players will fade away and some marginal players will be swallowed up by bigger players. He also takes note of the past miscues in Microsoft’s marketing, the ever unpopular VISTA operating system, and its’ much ballyhooed legal struggles.

Although he mentions it in the subtitle to his article, it takes Elgan a while to get to the pile of cash that Microsoft has been hording. So let’s deal with the 800 pound gorilla in the room first before we get to the nuances of Windows 7 and Microsoft’s plan to leverage it and reclaim its’ reputation and continue to dominate the marketplace. Cash is King. Microsoft has an estimated $20 billion in cash on hand just waiting to exploit a downturn in the market. As for survival and emerging as the dominate player after the current economic struggle, see paragraph one above regarding “only the strong will survive”. Elgan posits that Microsoft could buy Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu all in the same year. He doesn’t predict such a sweeping acquisition scheme, but he does recognize the coming consolidation in the industry and that the cash-rich enterprises will act in their best interests and flourish.

And now for the nuances to their reemergence, Elgan sees Windows 7 as the vehicle Microsoft will use to recapture the glory days of the pre-1990’s debacles. It is not so much a four-step approach; but rather Elgan sees four categories where Windows 7 will dominate:

1.       Netbooks: Mobile computing will kick into high gear. As Windows XP eventually will fade into the sunset, Windows 7 Operating System will be the operating system of choice and not the much beleaguered VISTA.

2.       Touch Screens: The transition from mouse, icon, and menu to the mouseless touch will be slow, but Windows 7 is poised to take advantage when the switch gets into high gear.

3.       Gaming: Growth in this sector will be exponential. Four categories to watch are i) console, ii) cell phones, iii) internet, and iv) desk top. Microsoft will dominate in 3 of the 4 categories, bowing only to Apple in the cell phone arena.

4.       64-bit Computing: Office 11 will ship next year in a 64 bit version and Windows 7 will provide the power boost needed for fast business computing.

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