After trying its presence in the social network by launching a music social network, Ping, Apple is keen on building essential functionalities of social networks as a service API that can be used in creating apps for App Store. A recent patent that has been awarded to Apple, unearthed by AppleInsider shows that Apple is trying to build an API that will help in adding and managing friends, this service should not be mistaken for a full fledge social network.
The system describes that it is meant to provide an efficient and highly-scalable friend service database that can consistency between various friend records. The system is planned in a way that a write-ahead log generator is employed to track transactions like accepting a friend request, deleting friends or merging to accounts of friends etc. Each time a new transaction happens a log is generated and the records updated. Once the transaction is finished the log is deleted and when the system spots multiple log keys that have not been erased over a period of time then it determines that there is an inconsistency in the database.
One other major feature of the planned system is a spam or stalker detector. Whenever a users sends a friend request the users associated spam count is increased by 1 and the count is decreased again when the friend request is accepted. The system has a pre-set threshold to flag a user as spammer os stalker when the spam count reaches the pre-set count. Once the user is flagged any request he sends across will be muted.
Apple is planning to build an API with all the features and let developers integrate it into their apps. We have to note that this is just a patent that has been awarded to Apple which in no way ensures that such a system will see the light of the day.