Update: Friendster confirmed that this patent has been awarded - look for an announcement soon. They've filed for a dozen or so of these, they say.
We're still waiting to hear back from Friendster about the context of this one, but I came across what appears to be yet another social networking patent for the company today, filed on August 25th 2006 and issued on March 6th 2007.
Friendster already has a related patent on a "system, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks" (document), plus another on a "method of inducing content uploads in a social network" (document).The one that came on the radar today is for a "system, method and apparatus for connecting users in an online computer system based on their relationships within social networks" (document).
Having read this one through a few times (which probably makes me more thorough than the patent office ;) ), it's still hard to grok exactly what's covered by this patent. My summary, however, is that it patents a method of searching your network based on degrees of separation - basically a continuation of the last patent, and something that might interest LinkedIn, which is based on a degrees of separation model. Lawyers, get your reading glasses on and explain what this all means in the comments section.
Disclosure: Friendster is a Mashable sponsor, pays us a lot of money etc.
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