DISQUS

Eric Rice · 10 months ago

Yeah, ya know, I just can't see it. The notion of saving, starring, favoriting, etc, just doesn't seem to be so epic and ingenious of a feature to be steal-worthy. All sites should have this. Saves on the dozens of 'this is great' comments, when a simple non-verbal communication click would do the trick.

This seems to be an issue in only the places where social media industry fandom runs higher than normal. It's just not a huge feature to fret over. :)

Matt Shaulis · 10 months ago

Agreed... A site adding a feature as innocuously generic as "Like" hardly seems something worthy of getting offensive about.

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

I wasn't being offensive in the least.

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

I'm not fretting over it per se because as I said I don't use Facebook - I don't like Facebook so really it doesn't matter in the larger scale of things to me. I just think that it's one thing to copy an idea or feature and make it better somehow but it is another thing to cut 'n paste an idea or feature.

AnonymousCoward · 10 months ago

"Bad artists copy. Great artists steal."
-- Pablo Picasso

John · 10 months ago

Here you're complaining about Facebook "stealing" Twitter's and FriendFeeds "ideas" yet I'm sure you'd complain if either received a patent on their innovative ideas. Without proprietary rights, the big guys can squash the little guys with ease. Didn't Gmail recently add a "to do" list feature identical to some startup's concept?

The one thing that sets the U.S. apart is our ability to innovate. It has provided us with a competitive advantage that has helped sustain our economy for decades and create jobs and opportunities. Invalid patents are a problem (the changes in obviousness standard should reduce such invalid patents as should the patent office being better equipped), but valid patents properly reward innovation – the lifeblood of our economy.

rabidcow · 10 months ago

I very much doubt FriendFeed or Twitter invented the favoriting feature.

Kyle Brady · 10 months ago

What, no name credit?

I linked you the article, gave you the premise for the post, AND wrote 2/3 of the title!

;-)

--Kyle

StevenHodson · 10 months ago

(checking email folders .. ooppss) sorry about that I got one from you and one from the boss man about the same thing. Fixed it up.

Kyle Brady · 10 months ago

Haha I was just kidding. I didn't really need a mention since it's a pretty obvious connection. I only sent out an email in the hopes you guys could be "first" to say it.

But thanks for the props anyways! ;-)

--Kyle

Mark Langston · 10 months ago

Definetly an evil move on the part of facebook. Crap look here Facebook Connect. Another evil service.

Geoffrey Faivre-Malloy · 10 months ago

Last time I checked, there were no patents on ideas...

Sure, you can patent a technique but the other guys decided not to do it.

That makes what FaceBook is doing fair game.

Hell, I will gratuitiously copy any and all features I see that a competitor has that I think are a good idea and I may or may not put my own spin on it.

Just because they're copying ideas, however, doesn't mean they're doomed to failure.

G-Man

John · 10 months ago

Not sure you're correct Geoffrey. I think you are mixing up Copyrights and Patents.

You can't copyright an idea, but you can patent it.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ31.html

Sean · 10 months ago

FYI- a patent or copyright ownership is only as good as your ability to enforce it.

And John an idea/discovery must meet the manner of manufacture requirements before it can be patented. A discovery/idea is not a patentable invention unless one uses the knowledge and ingenuity to produce either a new and useful thing or result, or a new and useful method of producing an old thing or result.

Boredcollegekid · 10 months ago

For me its not so much the idea of facebook adding the like feature as its the general move towards a friendfeed-like activity stream on the site. Few months ago they added the stream itself with comments and people made the same uproar about copying and it was justified then as it is now. No friendfeed didn't invent the like feature, could compare it to digging up, but friendfeed was one of the first major sites to put all the stuff together.

Andre Siregar · 10 months ago

Aren't we a little harsh on Facebook here? "Stealing" ideas? Yeah, they implemented something that FriendFeed and Twitter already have. So what? Businesses have been copying each other since the beginning of time. As far as "ripping off", well we don't know yet what Facebook will do with its Like feature. They may use the data for something different than what Friendfeed does and may even be an innovative one.

Andy C · 10 months ago

Interesting - using someone's photograph without acknowledgement in a post about copyright and theft.

http://ocaoimh.ie/2007/06/15/the-thieving-duck-...

LAZYKING · 10 months ago

Facebook has to pay 65 MILLIONS $ to ConnectU.....
Everything was stolen but I'll keep using it.

JW · 10 months ago

@G-man,

No one cares if the idea is patentable or not...FB is still lame for not being able to come up with anything original. Overavalued at what, $15,000,000,000!?! You got to be kidding...and the only way it can think of monetizing is by holding banner ads up in the face of its 200M members? While you're looking at pics of your friends, do you really give a shit about the teeth-whitening ad in the right column (or poorly embedded in the news feed)?

Facebook's problem is it has a 20+ year old as a CEO. Not taking anything away from his initiative or intelligence, Zuckerberg doesn't have the experience to sense the correct business moves. Did you know FB's Terms of Use forbid, yes FORBID, you from having a personal FB page and an FB page for your business? You can have one or the other, but you can't change. If you have a personal page, you CANNOT create a business page; however, if you have a business page, FB will gladly allow you to change it to a personal page. (It's because FB doesn't want your updates to be in your business' name...it wants businesses to pay for that privilege.) Bill Gates found this out. That's why he left FB in Feb 2008...he was getting 8000+ friend requests a day...and because FB didn't have the experience to know that its strength was in the virility of its news, it lost a powerful member. Those 8000+ were not Bill's fans...they were MS's fans (believe it or not!). Nonetheless, FB lost gates. Check it out. MS has an FB Fan page, but no MS FB page. So, in order for MS to reach those 8000+ who would have been willing to join its FB page, MS will now have to use FB's PPC or CPM marketing features.

Facebook is lame as hell and will wither unless it wakes up.

JW

James · 6 months ago

I like facebook for social networking and keeping track of my friends but its no bueno when it comes to discovering bands. I find the layout of myspace to be nauseating so I've been using www.putiton.com to find and follow new music acts.

Sam Hamilton · 6 months ago

put it on is pretty cool. thanks for the heads up! (even though you probably work for them)

virility · 4 months ago

Nice observation but I still love Facebook