Friendster Wins Social Networking Patent

Mashable reports that friendster has won a patent in social networking. From the original Red Herring article:

“The new Friendster patent covers the basic steps involved in joining a social network: entering a personal description and relationships to other users, mapping relationships and degrees of separation, and connecting to others through these friends.”

No word on if Friendster will pursue licensing fees from their competitors, but if they do it could seriously hinder the social networking scene. This could be a saving grace for friendster, and provides more insight into why they recently received another few million dollar capital infusion. I praise Friendster for being a pioneer in the social networking scene, but I don’t think anyone will disagree that it is 100% their own fault for not innovating over time. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Friendster won’t get greedy and heavily pursue their patent.

[tags]Friendster, Social Networking, Social Network, patent, mashable[/tags]