Facebook Patents Giving Gifts And Displaying Assets

Aaron Thalwitzer

Facebook is asking for trouble with this patent. Facebook can now prevent its competitors from “giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment.” For this article to work, please assume Facebook has a competitor — maybe World of Warcraft?

So let’s say you give your wife a Titansteel Destroyer in WoW, and then she posts about it on, um, MySpace (?). I feel icky suggesting that that might happen. Stay with me! So wifeysays, “My awesome hunky man gave me a cool polearm and now I don’t have to pay as many Chinese gold farmers! True love!” Does this infringe on Facebook’s patent?

No. But let’s say you listed your Titansteel Destroyer as an “asset” on Facebook. Then you “gifted” it to wifey and digitally “transferred” it on Facebook (Editor’s Note: “gift” is still not a verb). Wifey’s page now shows that Hubby gave her a Titansteel Destroyer. All this probably transpires in a couple of clicks, or automatically when you buy something on Amazon or elsewhere.

Here’s a summary of the invention:

A method for representing ownership of an asset in a social network environment, the method comprising: receiving a request from a first user of the social network environment to purchase the asset for a second user; recording information about a purchase of the asset from a vendor; associating, by a server for the social networking environment, the purchased asset with a profile of the second user; sending for display to a viewing user an association between the purchased asset and the second user on a feed display page; sending for display to the viewing user, in connection with the association between the purchased asset and the second user, information indicating that a third user, with whom the viewing user has established a connection in the social network, owns the asset, and information including a name of the first user who gave the asset to the second user, on the feed display page.

The type of asset could certainly be a Titansteel Destroyer, because included in the dependent claims include real, digital, or virtual assets. The asset transferring can be displayed on Web pages and icons, and the viewer can be extended to the giver, the recipient, and anyone connected to either of them. For you Winkelvi out there, the monetization comes in to play because the transfer will display a link from the merchant (e.g., Amazon). Also, it further extends Facebook’s tendrils into it’s users lives, which is, of course, just what users want. For utes these days, things don’t happen until they’ve been displayed and commented upon on Facebook. Existing and future competitors will face yet another challenge when trying to lure people to their social network.

*I have never played WoW, but virtual economies fascinate me.