This Day in Patent History – March 23 is celebrated as Family Day in South Africa, and in some regions of Canada, US, Vietnam, Australia and Thailand

March 23 is celebrated as Family Day in South Africa, and in some regions of Canada, US, Vietnam, Australia and Thailand.

This patent application provides a Social family networking platform to help families interact online.

All parents have the same privileges within the social family network. While parents have full access to all of the family management features, guardians have limited access under an embodiment in that they can log in and send posts, but cannot manage the family in any way. The family-orientation is strengthened by the fact that all postings are family-to-family, so everything sent to the family is equally visible to all parents. Despite the pervasive family-oriented model, however, posts do include information indicating which individual made the post [E.g. “Homer (Simpson Family)”]. Thus, all messages include metadata that identifies both the originator family and the originator individual.

Based on a family’s collective interests and activities, targeted services and products are suggested to the user, including books, music, events, toys, clothing, and household items. For example, a family may be presented with: “There is a science fair next weekend 5 miles away from you that your 9 year old may be interested in attending.” As another example, a family may be presented with: “Here’re the top 10 books for children who love soccer.”