Friendster, the company that famously patented social networking earlier this year, has just been granted another one. This time, the patent is a little lower on the obviousness scale - it covers uploading a photo of your friend, having them approve the photo and having the photo associated with them. I've simplified that slightly, and the actual patent covers "content", which might be an image with a caption, videos, audio, comments and other media types. The patent also includes details about the "degrees of separation" model, stating that the system could be set to a maximum degree of separation - in other words, you'd only need to approve photos from your closest friends, unless you changed the setting (at least, that's my interpretation).
With another social networking patent being granted, this once again shines a light on how ridiculous software patents are - MySpace didn't need any patents to replace Friendster as the leading social site, and it seems that out-innovating other companies would be better than hoarding patents. That said, this filing was made way back in June 2005, and we don't yet know whether Friendster intends to enforce its patents. If they did, however, things could get extremely interesting - it's been speculated that the original patent may be broad enough to apply to Facebook, Bebo and many popular social networks. But since the patent mentions the "degrees of separation" model, sites like LinkedIn may be targeted (once again, remember this is speculation - in reality they might decide not to take any action).