Facebook Secures Patent
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:
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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."
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