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Last year, it was reported that Facebook had purchased seven patents and eleven patent applications from the once popular social networking site Friendster. The purchase price was reported to be $39.5 million. Now, it turns out that Facebook has been granted a patent for one of those applications — something now being called “curated search” and described as follows:
Search results, including sponsored links and algorithmic search results, are generated in response to a query, and are marked based on frequency of clicks on the search results by members of social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation from the member who submitted the query. The markers are visual tags and comprise either a text string or an image.
Here’s how Erik Sherman at Bnet describes it:
Facebook would combine search results for a user with how others connected to the user in a social network responded to the same search results. If most people clicked on a handful of results, the user could see those links with some visual indication of their relative popularity. The system would work either fielding requests from third parties or for with the social network creating or obtaining the search results and delivering them to users.
Sherman points out that Facebook’s profile data combined with all the data about user preferences and behavior that has been gathered since the explosion of the “like” button across the web stand to make this a potentially powerful way to curate a user’s web results. “Given the frustrations many have with being overwhelmed by search results, Facebook has a potential huge advantage over search companies. It may also have locked down a monetarily valuable aspect of social network data that none of its direct competitors have capitalized on. This is one strategically brilliant company.” Of course, neither of these components existed when Friendster applied for the patent, so this is less about foresight than serendipity. But that does not make them any less brilliant strategically.
More on the web:
Liz Gannes, “Facebook Buys Friendster Patents for $40M,” GigaOm.com (Aug. 4th, 2010).
Erik Sherman, “New Facebook Patent: the Huge Implications of Curated Search [Update],” BNET.com (March 15th, 2011).
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