Marc's Voice

Do we have to worry about the Friendster patents?

I’ve had to advise more than one client on the validity, importance and threat of Friendster’s ’social networking patents’.

This thorn in our side is aggrevated because there’s no way in hell anyone is ever gonna buy Friendser, so it’ll never reap it’s VCs the kind of return they had hoped for. Everybody knows that for sure now.  So they’ve been spending their money on convincing Patent clerks that they were the first to invent all these ‘broad reaching’ patentable ideas.

From what my novice (25+ years in the business) eyes - the three Friendster’s patents are:

- a “system, method, and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks” - which seems so broad it ludicrous.  Not even sure what this refers to. This falls into the domain of the original patent from sixdegrees (which Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman bought at bankruptcy auction).

-the ‘method for inducing uploads’ seems like a joke - so you can definitely can ignore that one

- it’s the third patent and the notion of “system for managing connections” that has some ramifications.  This is the famous Marc <-> Fred <-> danah <-> Joi kind of display that Friendster helped pioneer. Yes - they did that early, if not first.  Orkut does this, a few others, but not many.

So the first patent is so broad, we won’t have to worry about it - MySpace or Facebook will spend their money squashing that.  The second patent seems more like a business process, then technology.

But if you’re interested in including the third patent/feature in your social nework - DON’T. Or else you’re liable to end up paying this Kleiner Perkins controlled social networking vendor money - if not ALL your money.

So if you’re like me, just stay away from the cutie “friend-friend-friend’ display and you’ll be fine.  This is what we advise all our consulting clients and customers.