# 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.

- **Patent:** US 8171128
- **Original title:** Communicating a newsfeed of media content based on a member's interactions in a social network environment
- **Owner:** Facebook Inc
- **Granted:** 2012
- **Status:** Public domain (expired)
- **Times cited:** 134
- **Field:** social_media, software, consumer_electronics, telecommunications

## What it does

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.

## 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

## 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.

## Real-world examples

1. Facebook News Feed (2006 onwards)
2. Social media content feeds

## Why it matters

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.

## 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

**Full plain-English explainer:** https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8171128/facebook-social-graph

**Original patent:** https://patents.google.com/patent/US8171128

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_Source: PatentBrief — https://patentbrief.org. Patent facts are from public records; the plain-English explanation is PatentBrief's._