Friendster awarded 'compatibility scoring' patent

Social network Friendster announced Tuesday that it has been awarded its fourth U.S. patent, called "Compatibility Scoring of Users in a Social Network." It does pretty much exactly what it sounds like--it parses user profile data to find people who might be compatible as friends.

The social network, considered an also-ran in the U.S. but a much bigger phenomenon in a number of Asian countries--it has 65 million registered users in Asia--had its first patent granted in July 2006 and says that more are on the way.

"In just six years, social networking has become both an industry--since 8 of the top 20 largest Web sites in the world are social networks--and a critical platform for over half a billion Internet users globally to share, communicate, connect, and be entertained with existing and new friends, family, and colleagues," Friendster CEO Richard Kimber, whom the company hired from Google in August, said in a release.

"A core component of the evolution of social networks is the ability of the online 'social graph' to represent our real social life. Understanding the common interests between people establishes common ground to build and enhance relationships," he added.

In case you were keeping track, this patent is No. 7,451,161 and it was granted on November 11.

[Penguinisto]

Patent should be rejected for Prior Art (and as a crap software patent). See also eHarmony.com

[honorable1]

Of course they got this patent, the USPTO is inept at best when it comes to technology patents. "Oh it's for a 'social network' so it MUST be new." This is a license to be a bully to twart future competition, nothing else.

[Thomas, David]

Caroline,
The real headline should be "*** did they just patent?!?"

You cannot patent a book (or at least your not supposed to), short story, painting etc. You can own the copyright, and or trademark. The point being, algorithms are a relatively simplistic thing. The entire point of the patent office is to protect unique ideas for entities over a period of time, that would normally have never been produced. Something visionary.

The continued issuance of bogus patents is alarming, and warps the reality of the value of an idea.

[Jim Hubbard]

This patent is BS!!! It is supposed to pass the test of non-obviousness. How obvious is it that 2 people that like the same things might just like each other?!!

Dumbasses!!!

How do we file a protest to this?

[Jim Hubbard]

Since it just takes too much effort for a CNET reporter to link to the actual topic of his/her post, here it is for you

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,451,161.PN.&OS=PN/7,451,161&RS=PN/7,451,161

This patent is actually for the METHOD of how they compute compatibility. This is a just and fair patent. Although eHarmony does something similar, it uses different data sets and computes compatibility differently than Friendster, Match.com or others. The methods of matching people are patentable because one person may find a new and unique method for computing compatibility that they wish t use publicly and wish to protect as intellectual property.

It really is the readers' fault (including my original posting) for not looking beyond CNET's simplistic post.

Look at it again. It consists solely of 4 original sentences and 2 quotes from other sources.

I doubt that the CNET blogger even understood what she was blogging about here. I certainly didn't understand the REAL story, just going on her "reporting" alone. As with 99% of CNET stories, you have to look behind the screen to actually find the truth.

After reading the patent, it is obviously about the METHOD of scoring compatibility, not about 'compatibility scoring"' itself.

Another shining star in the crown of CNET publishing. LOL.....

[punnajit]

It is called the "compatibility scoring", see the press release:
http://www.syndacast.com/press-releases/3154-release.html