How Facebook's News Feed Picks Stories You'll Like
Facebook's 2012 patent explains how it creates a personalized news feed by showing stories about friends' actions, ordered by your interest, and updating it based on what you click.
Original patent title: “Communicating a newsfeed of media content based on a member's interactions in a social network environment”
Facebook's 2012 patent explains how it creates a personalized news feed by showing stories about friends' actions, ordered by your interest, and updating it based on what you click. Granted to Facebook Inc in 2012 with 27 claims and 134 forward citations.
Key facts
Coverage
What does this patent actually cover?
This patent describes a system for creating a personalized news feed on a social network, like Facebook. It starts by looking at who you're friends with and what they've been doing. Then, it generates 'news stories' about their actions. These stories are put into a news feed, and the system tries to guess how much you'll like each one, putting the ones it thinks you'll like most at the top. Crucially, it watches what you click on or interact with in the feed and uses that information to pick even more stories for you, and to decide the order they appear in. For example, if you click on a friend's photo album, the system might show you more stories about that friend or similar content.
The gap
What does this patent NOT cover?
- News feeds that are not based on a user's connections within a social network
- News stories that do not describe an action taken by another user
- News feeds where the order of stories is not influenced by user affinity or interactions
- Systems that do not monitor user interactions to update the news feed
- News feeds that do not allow users to change the order of content
These exclusions are unique to PatentBrief — derived from the actual claim language, not patent-office boilerplate.
What made this novel
The key innovation was using a user's 'affinity' for content and their actual interactions to dynamically rank and update the news feed, moving beyond a simple chronological display to a personalized, engaging experience.
Schematic visualization of the patent's claim structure. Hand-drawn diagrams in progress for each landmark patent.
Where you've seen this
Real-world examples
Facebook News Feed (2006 onwards)
Social media content feeds
Why it matters
The bigger picture
This patent covers the core functionality of Facebook's News Feed, which launched in 2006 and quickly became a defining feature of social media. It explains the algorithmic approach to content delivery that keeps users engaged by prioritizing relevant updates from their social graph.
Filed
August 11, 2006
Granted
May 1, 2012
Market context
Who's building on this
Companies in this space
Facebook (now Meta) continues to be the primary entity building on this technology, as the News Feed remains central to its platforms. Other social media companies like Twitter (X), Instagram, and LinkedIn also employ similar algorithmic feed curation techniques.
Market impact
This patent underpins the fundamental mechanism of Facebook's News Feed, which revolutionized how users consume information on social networks. It established the paradigm of algorithmic content curation, driving user engagement and shaping the business models of social media platforms worldwide.
Claim 1 — Plain English
What this patent covers
This patent describes a system for creating a personalized news feed on a social network, like Facebook. It starts by looking at who you're friends with and what they've been doing. Then, it generates 'news stories' about their actions. These stories are put into a news feed, and the system tries to guess how much you'll like each one, putting the ones it thinks you'll like most at the top. Crucially, it watches what you click on or interact with in the feed and uses that information to pick even more stories for you, and to decide the order they appear in. For example, if you click on a friend's photo album, the system might show you more stories about that friend or similar content.
The clever bit
The key innovation was using a user's 'affinity' for content and their actual interactions to dynamically rank and update the news feed, moving beyond a simple chronological display to a personalized, engaging experience.
What it does not cover
- News feeds that are not based on a user's connections within a social network
- News stories that do not describe an action taken by another user
- News feeds where the order of stories is not influenced by user affinity or interactions
- Systems that do not monitor user interactions to update the news feed
- News feeds that do not allow users to change the order of content
Patent timeline
Application submitted to the patent office
Application published, typically 18 months after filing
Patent officially issued
PatentBrief Score
Impact Score
High impact
Citation count
40/40
Highly cited
Claim breadth
18/20
Very broad protection
Recency
5/20
Granted 10–20 years ago
Assignee scale
20/20
Major company or institution
PatentBrief Impact Score — based on citation count, claim breadth, recency, and assignee scale. Not a legal assessment.
Heuristic Value Estimate
What this patent might be worth
$102K – $328K
Midpoint $205K · expired or expiring · industry ×1.4
Heuristic only — blends forward/backward citation counts, claim scope, time remaining, litigation history, and CPC-derived industry baseline. Real valuations need a professional appraisal.
The original legal language
Original claims
27 claims as filed with the patent office.
Concepts involved
Citations
Patent lineage
Cite this patent
Bosworth, A., Cahill, M., Zuckerberg, M., Sanghvi, R., & Cox, C. (2012). How Facebook's News Feed Picks Stories You'll Like (U.S. Patent No. 8,171,128). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8171128/facebook-social-graph
Auto-generated from the patent record. Double-check author order and the issue date against the official USPTO document before submitting.
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Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What does How Facebook's News Feed Picks Stories You'll Like cover?
Facebook's 2012 patent explains how it creates a personalized news feed by showing stories about friends' actions, ordered by your interest, and updating it based on what you click.
Who owns patent US 8171128?
Facebook Inc owns this patent, granted in 2012.
When does this patent expire?
This patent is expected to expire on May 1, 2032, when the invention enters the public domain.
What is patent US 8171128 cited by?
This patent has been cited by 134 later patents that build on its ideas.
What problem does this patent solve?
This patent covers the core functionality of Facebook's News Feed, which launched in 2006 and quickly became a defining feature of social media. It explains the algorithmic approach to content delivery that keeps users engaged by prioritizing relevant updates from their social graph.
What does this patent NOT cover?
News feeds that are not based on a user's connections within a social network
Same assignee
More from Facebook Inc
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