@foobar said cool. <reply button> <retweet button>
That's an activity that can be public or only be viewed by your friends. People can participate by doing the same activity (retweeting or replying).
This also applies to google buzz, myspace, hi5, github comments, linkedin and tons of other services. It looks like the OP should re-read the patent.
Thank you freetard, that was insightful.
That's an activity that can be public or only be viewed by your friends. People can participate by doing the same activity (retweeting or replying).
In this patent, "News Items" are different from status updates, which would be considered "actions". The related art section of the patent discloses that users of social networks can already see direct actions of other users, and the utility of this patent is to filter this list to dampen the noise. A more apt example would be twitter providing a list of people who have been recently followed by people that you are following, with the option of clicking the news item to also follow this new person.
How would that be more apt? In twitter you can make your account private, so only a few selected people can see your actions.
Also a retweet, a reply or even a tweet are all actions (the action to retweet, reply and tweet ie say something).