Brief look at the claims suggests to me that this patent probably won't cover Twitter, or much else for that matter. It looks like it has two pretty severe limi

Brief look at the claims suggests to me that this patent probably won't cover Twitter, or much else for that matter. It looks like it has two pretty severe limitations: (1) there has to be a link to an online activity that feed readers can participate in, and (2) the feed must be limited to certain users prior to the feed's existence. Here is Claim 1 (all the other claims look to be similar): > 1. A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising: monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database; generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; It is a news feed about user activities. So far, nothing looks so interesting. > attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items Ok, the news items in the feed have links. But... > where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; So this is interesting. This means that it has to be an online activity (otherwise how can a link "enable" you to participate in the activity?). > limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; So the news feed cannot be public. Although Facebook might try to argue that this covers situations where the feed is sometimes private and sometimes public, it seems likely that this element would be read to require limiting all the time. If Facebook intended the opposite, then it should have said something like "determining whether to limit access." (Alternately, it might mean that the damages for the patent would be cut off by the fraction of feeds that were private.) > and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users. And you display the news feed to some of the users. That word "predetermined" is interesting--it suggests that the viewing users have to be chosen before the feed is made.