Selecting content items provided to groups including a social networking system user based on interaction with the content items by social networking system users

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10360223-B2
Application number	US-201514980470-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 28, 2015
Priority date	Dec 28, 2015
Publication date	Jul 23, 2019
Grant date	Jul 23, 2019

Abstract

A social networking system maintains various groups that each include one or more users and maintains information describing interactions by users with the social networking system. The social networking system selects various content items provided to groups including the user based on amounts of interaction with content items provided to groups including the user by other social networking system users as well as amounts of time since the social networking system obtained various content items provided to the groups. Information describing the selected content items is presented to the user by the social networking system outside of pages of content maintained by the social networking system for groups to which the selected content items were provided.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
maintaining by a group store of a social networking system, stored associations between a group identifier for a group and user identifiers for one or more users of the social networking system;
obtaining content items provided to the group by users of the social networking system;
storing associations between identifiers for the content items and the group identifier for the group;
presenting one or more of the content items associated with the group via a page of information for the group maintained by the social networking system and accessible by the one more users associated with the group;
receiving a request to present content to a viewing user of the social networking system that is a member of the group in a content unit feed for the viewing user presented on a content page external from the page of information for the group;
identifying an association between a user identifier of the viewing user and the group identifier for the group in the group store;
identifying candidate content items of the one or more content items presented via the page of information to the group that have not been previously presented to the viewing user;
computing a score for each of the candidate content items, the score for each candidate content item based at least in part on a type of content included in the candidate content item, an amount of interaction with the candidate content item by other users of the social networking system and a time since the candidate content item was obtained by the social networking system;
ranking the candidate content items based at least in part on the scores;
selecting one or more of the candidate content items based at least in part on the ranking;
generating a content unit including the one or more selected candidate content items; and
sending the content unit for display to the viewing user in the content unit feed on the content page outside of the page associated with the group to which the one or more selected candidate content items were provided.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein computing the score for each of the candidate content items comprises:
computing the score for each of the candidate content items based at least in part on a number of one or more specific interactions with the candidate content item by other users of the social networking system, the type of content included in the candidate content item, and the time since the candidate content item was obtained by the social networking system.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the one or more specific interactions with the candidate content item are selected from a group consisting of: indicating a preference for the candidate content item, commenting on the candidate content item, sharing the candidate content item with another user of the social networking system, and any combination thereof.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein computing the score for each of the candidate content items comprises:
associating a weight with each of the one or more specific interactions; and
determining scores for each of the candidate content items based at least in part on the weights associated with each of the one or more specific interactions, the type of content included in the candidate content item, and the time since the candidate content item was obtained by the social networking system.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the type of content included in the candidate content item is selected from a group consisting of: text data, image data, video data, audio data, and any combination thereof.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein computing the score for each of the candidate content items comprises:
computing the score for each of the candidate content items based at least in part on a number of unique users of the social networking system who performed one or more specific interactions with the candidate content item by other users of the social networking system, the type of content included in the candidate content item and the time since the candidate content item was obtained by the social networking system.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the one or more specific interactions with the candidate content item are selected from a group consisting of: indicating a preference for the candidate content item, commenting on the candidate content item, sharing the candidate content item with another user of the social networking system, and any combination thereof.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein selecting one or more of the candidate content items based at least in part on the ranking comprises:
selecting candidate content items having at least a threshold position in the ranking.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the content unit including the one or more selected candidate content items includes a display area presenting one or more of the selected candidate content items and instructions for modifying the one or more selected candidate content items presented by the display area.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the content unit further includes an interface element proximate to information identifying a selected candidate content item that indicates a preference for the selected candidate content item when accessed by the viewing user.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the content unit further includes an interface element that presents one or more additional content items having one or more characteristics matching characteristics of a content item presented by the display area when accessed by the viewing user.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the one or more additional content items comprise content items provided to a group to which the content item presented by the display area was provided.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein generating the content unit including the one or more selected candidate content items comprises:
selecting content from one or more of the selected candidate content items for presentation by the content unit, content from a selected candidate content item for presentation by the content unit based at least in part on types of content included in the selected candidate content item.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein sending the content unit for presentation to the viewing user outside of the page associated with the group to which the one or more selected candidate content items were provided comprises:
including the content unit in a feed of content selected for the viewing user by the social networking system and sent to a client device for presentation to the viewing user.

15. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:
maintain by a group store of a social networking system, stored associations between a group identifier for a group and user identifiers for one or more users of the social networking system;
obtain content items provided to the group by users of the social networking system;
store associations between identifiers for the content items and the group identifier for the group;
present one or more of the content items associated with the group via a page of information for the group maintained by the social networking system and accessible by the one more users associated with the group;
receive a request to present content to a viewing user of the social networking system that is a member of the group in a content unit feed for the viewing user presented on a content page external from the page of information for the group;
identify an association between a

Assignees

• Facebook Inc

Inventors

• Li Yanping
• Ju Li
• Vaidya Adit

Classifications

• G06Q10/40

  Business processes related to social networking or social networking services · CPC title

• H04L67/306

  User profiles · CPC title

• G06F16/24578 Primary

  using ranking · CPC title

• G06F16/9536 Primary

  Search customisation based on social or collaborative filtering · CPC title

• G06Q30/02

  Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising · CPC title