Friendster patented social networks
At one time, Friendster was one of the first social networks on the Internet, and then one of the most popular. Despite the fact that among registered participants there are still 9-10 million people (mostly from Asia), now it is significantly inferior to such giants as MySpace and Facebook . Losing them in popularity, Friendster has every chance to recoup on another front: legal.
Patent No. 7,069,308 describes "a system, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their interconnections within social networks." “We will do everything we can to protect our intellectual property,” said Kent Lindstrom, President of Friendster.
Friendster - the pioneer of social networks - is going through hard times. The main outflow of users happened at the end of 2004 and during 2005, when serious technical problems started on the site. For some reason, they lasted for almost a whole year. Even an additional investment of $ 15 million did not help return users who were tortured by the long wait for pages to load.
After the owners of the company witnessed a loud deal involving MySpace, they put their company up for sale in October 2005. However, the buyer has not yet been found. Friendster almost went bankrupt in February 2006, but there was another investor who paid off the company's debts and gave money to staff salaries (a little less than 30 people).
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Friendster has never been a profitable business, but now the company's revenues are growing. Profit comes from advertising in the United States and from the sale of SMS-services in Asia. A new patent may add to the list of sources of profit also license fees.
The patent describes the main stages of engaging a user in a social network: entering personal information and indicating links with other users; mapping of relationships and "degrees of separation"; the mechanism of connecting users through their common friends. According to the director of the company, investors from Kleiner Perkins in 2003 asked to apply for a patent. And this is only one of a dozen patents filed by the company. Another 11 patent applications are being reviewed.
Interestingly, the Friendster patent is not the only patent in this area. So, back in 2001, the company Six Degrees of Separation (another failed startup in the field of social networks) received such a patent. By the way, he is cited in the Friendster patent, so the patent service did not consider them identical.
Six Degrees of Separation was bought at auction in 2003 by the founders of LinkedIn and Tribe.net . Thus, LinkedIn has something to respond to possible claims from Friendster.
Patent No. 7,069,308 describes "a system, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their interconnections within social networks." “We will do everything we can to protect our intellectual property,” said Kent Lindstrom, President of Friendster.
Friendster - the pioneer of social networks - is going through hard times. The main outflow of users happened at the end of 2004 and during 2005, when serious technical problems started on the site. For some reason, they lasted for almost a whole year. Even an additional investment of $ 15 million did not help return users who were tortured by the long wait for pages to load.
After the owners of the company witnessed a loud deal involving MySpace, they put their company up for sale in October 2005. However, the buyer has not yet been found. Friendster almost went bankrupt in February 2006, but there was another investor who paid off the company's debts and gave money to staff salaries (a little less than 30 people).
')
Friendster has never been a profitable business, but now the company's revenues are growing. Profit comes from advertising in the United States and from the sale of SMS-services in Asia. A new patent may add to the list of sources of profit also license fees.
The patent describes the main stages of engaging a user in a social network: entering personal information and indicating links with other users; mapping of relationships and "degrees of separation"; the mechanism of connecting users through their common friends. According to the director of the company, investors from Kleiner Perkins in 2003 asked to apply for a patent. And this is only one of a dozen patents filed by the company. Another 11 patent applications are being reviewed.
Interestingly, the Friendster patent is not the only patent in this area. So, back in 2001, the company Six Degrees of Separation (another failed startup in the field of social networks) received such a patent. By the way, he is cited in the Friendster patent, so the patent service did not consider them identical.
Six Degrees of Separation was bought at auction in 2003 by the founders of LinkedIn and Tribe.net . Thus, LinkedIn has something to respond to possible claims from Friendster.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/4148/
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