Facebook Patents News Feed, Social Net Confusion Ensues

You know that stream of friendship dates, comments, photos, and whatnot that constitutes your Facebook "news" feed? Facebook's apparently been granted a patent on the idea. But isn't it something that's been done before?

The patent application dates back to 2006, just before Facebook revealed its news feed/service, and it's simply a patent on the the notion of "displaying a news feed in a social network environment." The introductory text, credited to Mark Zuckerberg runs thus:

A method for...