Facebook Patents The News Feed

According to a report by AllFacebook, the Facebook patent for its News Feed (submitted in 2006) has been approved. This could hold serious implications for all other social networking sites using this functionality. Twitter however, is not to fear as the patent covers “implicit actions” and not status updates which is what Twitter is based on. The patent covers stories about the actions of a user’s friends and so perhaps not as substantial as first thought, but it may still affect local social networks if the patent is applicable outside the US – watch this space!