Given prior art, is Facebook's patent on Reactions valid?

Question

In reference to the patent: US8918339, it would seem to me that the Path (social network) had this same implementation years before Facebook.

Its been easy to find, via search engines, a number of screenshots from 2012 and earlier that appear to pre-date the patent.

See also:

1. "With Reactions, Facebook Supercharges The Like Button With 6 Empathetic Emoji". TechCrunch article notes Path image form 2012
2. "Path Tries Again With a Wider Network" - NYTimes, Nov 2011, with screenshot
3. "Path for Apple iOS, Android: Mobile Social Network Review" - Jan 2012

Wouldn't that be grounds enough to make this patent invalid? Does anyone have more examples?

Answer 1

Without a deeper dive, you might have a case against the broadest one of the independent claims: claim 10. However, independent claims 1 and 15 also contain a pay-for-emoji feature: "prompting the viewing user for payment information associated with the selected emoji;"

It is not clear at all if Path had this functionality.