Social networking giant Facebook has patented its 'News Feed' technology, official as of the company revealed on Friday. Feature like feed filters, feed advertising, searching the feed and other services related to news feeds are also patented by Facebook with 'News Feed".

Introduced in 2006, 'News Feed' technology was the first one to be featured on the social networking site. The 'News Feed' feature of Facebook provides live news feeds about recent Facebook activities undertaken by friends of a particular user.

The technology generates news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network.

Currently a lot of other social networking services are also using the same feature, though under different names. However, as the feature is now patented, it would not be available freely for other users. Facebook now could charge other social networking sites a particular amount for using the technology.

Nevertheless, it can also prohibit them from using the feature in their sites.