Search indices for social plug-ins

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10467213-B2
Application number	US-201514923095-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 26, 2015
Priority date	Oct 26, 2015
Publication date	Nov 5, 2019
Grant date	Nov 5, 2019

Abstract

A method includes receiving, from a first application via a social plug-in associated with the online social network, a request for content from a second application. The content may be related to an entity associated with the online social network. The first application may be a third party application. The request may include an entity-identifier of the entity, an application-identifier of the first application, and a deep link to the first application including instructions for accessing a display state of the first application associated with the request. The method further includes accessing a deep-link index of the online social network including a plurality of records indexing deep-links to third-party applications, and then generating a record in the deep-link index corresponding to the requested entity. The record may include the entity-identifier of the entity, the application-identifier of the first application, and the deep link to the first application.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising, by one or more computing devices of an online social network:
receiving, from a first application of a first content provider and running on a client device of a first user, via a social plug-in that is associated with the online social network and linked to the first application, a request for content provided by a second content provider, the content being related to an entity of the online social network, wherein the first content provider is a third-party content provider that is separate from and external to the online social network, the request comprising:
an entity-identifier of the entity;
an application-identifier of the first application; and
a deep link to the first application comprising instructions for accessing a display state of the first application associated with the request;

accessing a deep-link index of the online social network comprising a plurality of records indexing deep links to a plurality of mobile applications, wherein each record comprises an entity-identifier of a respective entity, an application-identifier associated with a respective content provider, and a deep link to a display state associated with the respective entity, the deep-link index being stored in one or more servers associated with the online social network;
generating a first record in the deep-link index corresponding to the entity, wherein the first record comprises the entity-identifier of the entity, the application-identifier of the first application, and the deep link to the first application; and
sending, responsive to the request, to the first application on the client device via the social plug-in, instructions for displaying content from the second content provider related to the entity in the display state of the first application on a user interface of the first application by displaying:
a user interface of a second application of the second content provider overlapping a portion of the first application, wherein the user interface of the second application comprises the content from the second content provider and related to the entity, and
a persistently displayed interactive element that toggles between the display of the user interface of the first application and the display of the user interface of the second application overlapping the portion of the first application.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second application is an application associated with the online social network.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second application is one of the plurality of the mobile applications.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the entity corresponds to a node of a social graph of the online social network, the social graph comprising a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges connecting the nodes, and each of the edges between two of the nodes representing a single degree of separation between them.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the requested content comprises information associated with a first node of the social graph of the online social network that corresponds to the entity.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein the entity-identifier of the entity comprises a social-network identifier (ID) corresponding to a first node of the social graph of the online social network.

7. The method of claim 4 , wherein the entity-identifier of the entity comprises a text-string description comprising one or more n-grams, and
wherein the text-string description is parsed to determine a first node of the social graph of the online social network that corresponds to the entity.

8. The method of claim 4 , wherein the application-identifier of the first application comprises a social-network identifier (ID) corresponding to a second node of the social graph of the online social network.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the deep-link index comprises an application index, the application index being a forward index, and each record of the application index corresponds to a respective application and comprises:
a respective application-identifier (ID) of the application;
a respective entity-identifier (ID) of a respective entity of the online social network associated with the application;
one or more deep links corresponding to the respective application ID, each deep link comprising instructions to access a display state of the application; and
respective metadata associated with each deep link, the respective metadata comprising information associated with a user interaction with the deep link.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the metadata comprises information associated with one or more of:
one or more dwell times of each of one or more users of the online social network associated with each of the deep links; or
a number of interactions of each of the one or more users associated with each of the deep links.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the deep-link index comprises an entity index, the entity index being an inverted index, and each record of the entity index corresponds to a respective entity of the online social network and comprises:
a respective entity-identifier (ID) of the entity;
one or more deep links corresponding to the respective entity ID, each deep link comprising instructions to access a respective display state of a respective application associated with the entity; and
respective metadata associated with each deep link, the respective metadata comprising information associated with a user interaction with the deep link.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the metadata comprises information associated with one or more of:
one or more dwell times of each of one or more users of the online social network associated with each of the deep links; or
a number of interactions of each of the one or more users associated with each of the deep links.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request further comprises authentication information for accessing the second content provider.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the authentication information is sent via the social plug-in and not shared with the first application.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving the requested content from the second content provider,
wherein the received content is sent via the social plug-in and not shared with the first application.

16. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
storing the deep-link index in a database associated with the online social network.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first application is a mobile application of the plurality of mobile applications.

18. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first application is a third-party application that is separate from and external to the online social network.

19. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request further comprises an indication of a type of data to be retrieved and displayed via the social plug-in in response to the request.

20. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
indexing a plurality of additional deep links in the first record in the deep-link index, each additional deep link corresponding to the entity and associated with a respective additional content provider, wherein each additional deep link indicates a respective display state of the respective additional content provider.

21. One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that is operable when executed to:
receive, from a first application of a first content provider and running on a client device of a fir

Assignees

• Facebook Inc

Inventors

• Stein Alexander P
• Rothschild Michael Yehuda
• Bennier Ravit
• Vishwanath Tirunelveli R
• Stock Ethan Charles
• Bhartia Varun Vikram

Classifications

• G06F9/54

  Interprogram communication · CPC title

• G06F16/9024

  Graphs; Linked lists (G06F16/9027 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G06F16/2228 Primary

  Indexing structures · CPC title

• H04L67/306

  User profiles · CPC title

• H04L67/22

  Electricity · mapped topic