Facebook has been granted a patent on the Newsfeed, "displaying a news feed in a social network environment." Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook found the patent first and says it could be "one of the most significant social web patents" in a decade.
If all algorithmic delivery of social activity updates to social network users falls under this patent Facebook applied for in August 2006 (one month before it launched its controversial Newsfeed) then there's going to be a whole lot of trouble for websites all over the web. We've got calls and emails in with Facebook PR, we're going to start thinking and reading up about what this could mean but for now, please join us over on Google Buzz to discuss this story as it unfolds in real time.
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18 months ago we wrote the following, as site after site adopted a Newsfeed model for delivering updates to users:
Today we're ready to declare The Newsfeed the dominant internet metaphor of the day; the cascading waterfall of updates from your friends, with comments swirling even around those - that model is everywhere now!
MySpace, Flickr, Yahoo!, Twitter (?), the sharing part of Google Reader and even Google Buzz - do all of these sites have technology at the center of their social experiences that falls under this new patent of Facebook's?
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