The US Patent and Trademark Office has recently awarded Facebook a patent for ‘News Feed’ - an online activity that is central to social networking. The patent - titled “Dynamically providing a ‘news feed’ about users of a social network” – will facilitate the sharing of news feeds between friends and colleagues.

Noting that Facebook had applied for the patent back in August 2006, nearly a month before the social networking site was opened to all Internet users, a company spokeswoman said in a Friday e-mail that it was “a pivotal moment in Facebook’s history and changed the way millions of people consumed and discovered information on the site.”

Adding that Facebook is pleased at being awarded the patent – which is now officially the US Patent No. 7,669,123 - covers 25 claims in all, the spokeswoman said that the company feels “humbled” by the adoption and expansion of News Feed over time.

The patent will include a “display of the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.”

The eight investors who have been listed on the patent include Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; principal product manager Ruchi Sanghvi; director of product Chris Cox; design strategist Aaron Sittig; co-founder Chris Hughes; director of user experience and design Katie Geminder; engineer Andrew Bosworth; and engineer Dan Corson.