This is common. I recently found a patent covering advertising based on what a user likes on social media just the other day: https://www.google.com/patents/US9

This is common. I recently found a patent covering advertising based on what a user likes on social media just the other day: https://www.google.com/patents/US9495693 https://www.google.com/patents/US9495693 Which is not only incredibly obvious, but also has a decade of prior art that could potentially invalidate it. Though I think was the USPTO is allowing here is the described mechanisms behind the concepts, not the concepts themselves.