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!

Disaster at the Speed of Light

In this age where speed is King and the internet our support system (look at what happens in the office when the internet goes down), we can see that ever-shortening time frame reputations can be tarnished. Corporations now live in glass houses. If something can be known by the public, it will be!

When Dominos Pizza experienced its crisis involving employee videos aired on YouTube, it reacted with a press release – the lesson to be learnt here is that you have to fight like with like, and the trouble continued until the company responded with its own video.

We need to be prepared in all areas for a crisis, although quite a negative outlook on life, it is realistic. Don’t wait until the damage has been done to develop a presence online, play ahead of the game. The great thing about the internet is that you can react instantly whether the comment is good or bad, and interact with the public like never before.