{
  "patent_number": "US 9602605",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Facebook's Share Button Works Across Different Websites",
  "original_title": "Sharing digital content on a social network",
  "summary": "A patent describing how a social network can pull content from an outside website and share it with friends based on specific user-selected settings.",
  "what_it_does": "This patent explains the mechanism behind the 'Share' button found on third-party websites. When a user clicks a sharing control outside of a social network, the social network server receives a request and serves an interface back to the user. This interface allows the user to define 'sharing parameters,' such as which specific parts of a webpage to include, how the content should look, and which friends or channels (like a wall or private message) should receive it. The system then retrieves the content from the external site and distributes it within the social network based on those user-defined settings.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover sharing content that is already hosted directly on the social network's own servers.",
    "Does not cover automated sharing that happens without an explicit interface for the user to select parameters.",
    "Does not cover the underlying technology of the web browser or the external website itself.",
    "Does not cover methods of sharing that do not involve a social networking system with established user connections."
  ],
  "filed": "2008-10-27",
  "granted": "2017-03-21",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Facebook Inc",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/facebook-inc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Oswald Soleio Cuervo",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/oswald-soleio-cuervo"
    },
    {
      "name": "James Wang",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/james-wang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Akhil Wable",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/akhil-wable"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 4,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "software",
    "ecommerce"
  ],
  "abstract": "Embodiments of the invention provide techniques for more effectively and easily sharing on a social networking system digital content obtained from an external system. In one embodiment a user selects a control for sharing content from the external system that causes a sharing request to be sent. The sharing request is received by the social networking website, and an interface is presented to the user requesting sharing parameters. The user provides sharing parameters through the interface that are received by the social networking website. Content is retrieved from the external system and is transmitted to one or more destinations in the social networking website based at least in part on the sharing parameters. The sharing parameters may include selection parameters for indicating which content to share, formatting parameters for specifying how to format the content, and destination parameters indicating particular destinations in the social networking website for the content.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9602605/facebook-stories",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/9602605/facebook-stories/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US9602605",
  "relatedPatents": []
}