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Yahoo has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that the social networking giant is infringing on 10 patents.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, "Facebook's entire social network model, which allows users to create profiles for and connect with, among other things, persons and businesses, is based on Yahoo's patented social networking technology."

Facebook says that it's "disappointed" that Yahoo has decided to resort to litigation, but Yahoo contends that it is "confident it will prevail."

Facebook is supposedly infringing on Yahoo's advertising, privacy, customization, social networking and messaging patents, and others.

Yahoo's advertising patents include four patents related to generating ads that relate to users (like Facebook's personalized ads that include users' friends info) and monitoring ad clicks for click fraud. Yahoo's privacy patents include two patents that allow users to customize how information is shared (like Facebook's privacy settings -- but perhaps a little more coherent).

Yahoo's customization patents include two patents related to customizing a Web experience based on users' needs and interests (like Facebook's "Like" button). Yahoo's social networking patent is about letting users customize info about themselves, join groups of people with similar interests, and share information; Yahoo's messaging patent encapsulates e-mail, instant messaging, and "other messaging communication" on social networking websites.

In the lawsuit, Yahoo notes that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg "has conceded that the design of Facebook is not novel and is based on the ideas of others." Yahoo backs up this claim by quoting Zuckerberg himself: "The thing that's been really surprising about the evolution of Facebook is -- I think then and I think now -- that if we didn't do this someone else would have done it. Getting there first is not what it's all about."

To me that just sounds like Zuckerberg is conceding that "being first" isn't necessarily the most important thing.

Yahoo says Facebook is infringing on patents in "messaging, news feed generation, social commenting, advertising display, preventing click fraud, and privacy controls." Yahoo also claims that, before it adopted Yahoo's "patented social networking technology in 2008," Facebook was considered one of the "worst performing Internet sites for advertising."

Yahoo is asking that Facebook pay triple damages and all of Yahoo's legal costs, and that Facebook be "permanently enjoined" from further infringement of the patents in the suit.

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Yahoo Sues Facebook, Alleging Patent Infringement

Everyone seems to have a Facebook page today. The social media has emerged as a hot platform to build a network and stay in touch with your friends. Like others, real estate professionals too need to have a social media profile. There are several social networking websites that the real estate agents can use to increase their web presence. This could be the right platform to attract more clients.

Los Angeles CA (PRWEB) March 12, 2012

Keeping the interests of real estate professionals in concern, ReSocialClub.com has launched this social media network which is exclusive to these professionals only. Now, real estate professionals can take the optimum level of benefits from their web presence facilitated by ReSocialClub.com. The site brings a variety of social networking opportunities to the realty professionals. The benefits of using the site that these professionals can achieve can be enumerated as:

Social media and social networking are not just the terms that the real estate agents read and hear about. The majority of them even dont completely know how social media can be helpful in making their business more prosperous and sustainable. ReSocialClub.com now brings forth the reality that its not just a buzzword but it can serve as a veritable platform to draw attention of the property buyers, sellers, investors and others. The site offers the real estate professionals to keeping up with the emerging and at the same time expand the business prospects.

According to the CEO of ReSocialClub.com, For many real estate professionals, maintaining a social media profile on various sites can seem a very daunting task. But today, the social media is one important tool that business owners and professionals need to rope into their marketing strategy. Keeping these facts in mind, we have come up with this exclusive social media platform for the realtors the ReSocialClub.com.

Thorsen Mlucus, an independent property management consultant from Mexico, acclaims with joy and is very much optimistic about the launch of this platform, exclusively designed for real estate professionals. In an e-mail letter to the site, he writes, I think, its better than Facebook and other social media sites. I have thousands of friends on Facebook but here on ReSocialClub.com, only a dozen of them will mean regular business. Thats the benefit of a platform that caters to your segment only.

Interestingly, membership of this website is limited to the real estate professionals only. The website allows you to choose a Profile Address of your desire and you can forward this profile address to anyone whom you want to visit your profile. An easily memorable and easily recognizable Profile Address will help you to popularize yourself fast on the web. Your membership will allow you to create your profile on the site and start networking with thousands of professionals from your niche only. It will give you to unlock your potential and multiply your business very fast, powered by social media networking.

About Profile ReSocialClub.com

ReSocialClub.com is a social media platform, built exclusively for the real estate professionals. Only real estate professionals are allowed to register on the site and host their profiles. A registered member will have host of networking opportunities on the site. Members can view each other profiles and update and they can interact with each other via online chat. They can share valuable information through blog and forum postings. A member can seek input on complex real estate issues from a number of expert real estate professionals by posting a thread. Moreover, a member can also post images and videos related to their property and generate business leads. The site has been developed to serve the all-round purpose of a real estate professional.

For more details, log on to http://www.resocialclub.com/.

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A Social Networking Exclusive for REALTORS Launched

Durham, NC (USA Today) -- Given the role social networking played in North Carolina's football infractions, both the university and the NCAA addressed the difficulties involved in monitoring an athlete's online activities.

The NCAA announced Monday that North Carolina's football program is banned from a bowl game in 2012 and must forfeit 15 scholarships over a three-year period. The NCAA investigation found the football program had committed nine major violations involving academic fraud, improper benefits and former assistant coach John Blake acting as an agent.

As a result, the university updated its guidelines for athletes. Athletes are notified that at least one coach or administrator has been assigned to monitor sites regularly, evaluating postings that identify possible improper extra benefits or agent-related activities. The policy specifies a range of sanctions for violations, including the loss of scholarship and dismissal from the team.

UNC athletics director Bubba Cunningham said monitoring social media is difficult given its changing nature.

"As all these cases transpire, there's new findings and new things you have to try to prevent in the future," Cunningham said in a news media teleconference.

According to the NCAA report, the school failed to "consistently monitor the social networking activity of its student-athletes." The report stated that in one instance an athlete's site would have alerted the school to certain violations in dealings with agents and runners.

The report said, "While we do not impose an absolute duty upon member institutions to regularly monitor such sites, the duty to do so may arise as part of an institution's heightened awareness when it has or should have a reasonable suspicion of rules violations."

Britton Banowsky, commissioner of Conference USA and chair of the committee on infractions, said, "To expect the university to monitor social networking sites of all their student athletes is too much."

Continued here:
UNC, NCAA Address Social Media Monitoring

Social tools debuting at the enterprise level face many pitfalls that can derail even the best laid plans. A few IT leaders speaking at the Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise Conference and Expo in San Francisco last week revealed some of these social danger zones.

Social collaboration tools from enterprise vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Salesforce can help co-workers find each other over a vast expanse of departments and buildings to work on a project. Co-workers can communicate through text, pictures, audio and video. Employee blogs and wikis form a knowledge base that lets employees find answers to questions in mere minutes.

"I answer one question for 18,000 people," says Bryce Williams, social collaboration consultant charged with making social networking pervasive at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. "I never have to ask the same question twice. If someone asks the same question, I just link" to the answer.

Yet a few missteps can trip up even the most promising social enterprise networking effort. They include a poor internal marketing effort from the outset that leads to lackluster participation, as well as employees secretly seeking to undermine social networking.

A poor first showing of a social collaboration site or tool can put an end to the technology before it has a chance to take hold. That is, a social network needs to get to critical mass quickly. Think of it as a new-age twist on Metcalfe's Law: Greater participation means more value, yet newness means there's little or no initial participation.

Dan Pontefract, senior director of learning and collaboration at Telus, a major wireless telco in Canada, tried to get out in front of this conundrum by putting together a site and video about collaboration and social tools that are coming to a computer screen near you. Called What If, this "movie trailer" was designed to inform and excite.

"Didn't go as well as it should have," Pontefract says. "People didn't have any idea what this was and got more confused. Lesson learned is that you need some of the tools" already in place.

Kevin Jones, consulting social and organizational strategist at NASA's Marshall and Goddard Space Flight Centers, had similar issues with NASA's Spacebook, an enterprise social network designed around Facebook and launched in the summer of 2009 to much fanfare.

"It failed because the focus wasn't on people," Jones says.

Spacebook's problem was that it began life as an IT project, one that didn't take into consideration an organization's culture and politics--"but that's the glue," Jones says. "No one knew how Spacebook would help them do their jobs," as opposed to an existing method of collaboration, such as email.

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Consumerization of IT: The Social Networking Problem

Along with religion, politics can be a touchy subject for polite conversation in the real world, and new research shows our online social lives mirror our real world behaviors politics and social networking sites have an uneasy relationship, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Centers Internet & American Life project.

The survey was completed in February 2012 and combed information from 2,253 Americans, age 18 and over. Some introductory numbers Pew found: 80 percent of Americans use the Internet, 66 percent of those Americans use a social networking site, and of those people, 75 percent say that their friends post some sort of political content.

While some political analysts have criticized social networking sites and the Internet for being responsible for creating political echo chambers, the Pew survey seems to show that this echo chamber viewpoint may be too harsh of a conclusion. Pew found that only 25 percent of social networking users always or mostly agree with the political content posted by friends.

The survey seemed to suggest that SNS users friendship are not centered on political discussion and that many networks are not built with ideological compatibility as a core organizing principle. Users seem to shy away from political confrontation; 73 percent say they sometimes, or never agree with friends political postings, and 66 percent of those people who dont see eye-to-eye with their friends on politics tend to ignore those posts. A fifth (22 percent) of social networking users actively censor themselves politically for fear of upsetting or offending one of their social network friends.

Interestingly, a good portion of users have been surprised by their friends political leanings. The survey found that 38 percent of SNS users learned their friends held different political beliefs than they thought; this typically happened with Democrats, liberals as well as those with very conservative views.

And if youve ever thought of unfriending someone for being too political zealous, youre not alone. At least 18 percent of social networking site users have decided to block, unfriend or hide someone based on politics. Usually, the top reasons for unfriending are for hyper-frequent political posting, for offensive posts, or for argumentative behavior. Typically the blocked friend was a distant friend, an acquaintance or someone theyve never met in the real world. Demographic-wise, liberals tend to block more: 28 percent of liberals have blocked, unfriended or hidden, while only 16 percent of conservatives and 14 percent of moderates have acted this way.

These numbers dont necessarily mean that politics is taboo. Social networking sites can still be a hot bed of political conversation, according to Pew, especially during campaign seasons. Politicos recent team up with Facebook to measure GOP candidate buzz somewhat confirms Pews point. 47 percent of SNS users have hit the like button to affirm a friends political comment and 16 percent have friended or followed someone based on similar political views: Democrats tend to affirm more with comments than Republicans or Independents. All in all, the Pew survey says that friends sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, inside social networking sites, but tend to ignore any little political blips of annoyance to continue on with friendships.

Via Pew Internet

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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Pew study: Social networking sites' users are uneasy around political postings