Friendster has been granted its fourth patent regarding social networking, and still has more than a dozen patent applications under consideration. The current patent is for “compatibility scoring of users in a social network”, or in simpler terms how compatible are users of a social network to each other. The patent outlines a technology that is being used by almost all social networks, this begs the question that if and when Friendster could actually demand payments from the likes of MySpace and Facebook.
How does this apply to dating sites? I would think that a dating site would be much more prone to being effected by this patent than Myspace or Facebook. Neither of these services recommend friends to you based on similarities (although facebook does recommend friends to you based on your friends’ friends).
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