The approval of a 2006-filed patent by Facebook developers could be a game changer for other social media networks with the same news feed formula.

People are talking about it: a link from leading social media blog Mashable has risen to the top of tweeted links, according to TweetMeme, with 2,120 tweets with the link at 1:45 p.m. Friday.

Here’s the abstract of U.S. Patent 7,669,123, approved Feb. 23: “A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying 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.” Sound familiar? Twitter is a news feed, and the status updates on MySpace are also similar.

In plain English, here’s what the patent means: a news feed on a social network is compiled of links or news items (statuses, posts of other media) by a user aggregated in a particular order for certain users (friends, followers) to see.

Blog All Facebook, an unofficial blog, said this: “…this could be considered one of the most significant social web patent since Jan. 16, 2001, the day the six degrees patent was first published.”

Here’s more buzz in the social media world:

A Twitter phishing attack spread through direct messages. The message contained an “lol is this you?” or a “haha is this you?” and a link to a site that allowed spammers to take hold of their accounts.

A Facebook page obtained a wide fan base for the Norwegian curling team’s pants.

Tell us: if Facebook has a monopoly on the news feed, will it change your social media habits? What's the best link or item on the web you've seen this week? Comment below.