Social circles in social networks

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9338197-B2
Application number	US-201113164562-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 20, 2011
Priority date	Nov 1, 2010
Publication date	May 10, 2016
Grant date	May 10, 2016

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for transmitting contact data for displaying graphical representations of contacts for display to a user, the contacts being contacts of the user within a computer-implemented social networking service, generating a first social circle of the user, the first social circle comprising a first subset of contacts of the user within the social networking service and defining a first distribution for digital content, generating a second social circle of the user, the second social circle comprising a second subset of contacts of the user within the social networking service and defining a second distribution for digital content, and, in response to user input, providing the first social circle and the second social circle for selection by the user to define a distribution of digital content, the distribution comprising at least one of the first distribution and the second distribution.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An electronic social networking system comprising:
one or more computing devices; and
one or more computer-readable media coupled to the one or more computing devices and having instructions stored thereon which, when executed by the one or more computing devices, cause the one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising:
transmitting contact data for displaying graphical representations of people profiles for display to a user, the people profiles being contacts of a user profile of the user within a computer-implemented social networking service;
generating a first social circle of the user profile, the first social circle comprising a first subset of people profiles of the user profile within the social networking service and defining a first distribution for a digital content item of the user profile, wherein the digital content item includes information that identifies the user profile to the contacts of the user;
generating a second social circle of the user profile, the second social circle comprising a second subset of people profiles of the user profile within the social networking service and defining a second distribution for the digital content item;
processing the first social circle to provide a first access control list that specifies which of the first subset of people profiles are granted access to the digital content item;
processing the second social circle to provide a second access control list that specifies which of the second subset of people profiles are granted access to the digital content item; and
in response to user input, providing the first social circle and the second social circle for selection by the user to define a distribution of the digital content item from the user profile, the distribution comprising at least one of the first distribution based on the first access control list and the second distribution based on the second access control list, wherein the digital content item is distributed from the user profile to each people profile of the first subset of people profiles based on the first access control list and the digital content item is distributed from the user profile to each people profile of the second subset of people profiles based on the second access control list.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise transmitting an indication to each people profile of the first subset of people profiles, the indication informing each people profile of membership in the first social circle.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise transmitting an indication to each people profile of the first subset of people profiles, the indication informing each people profile of identities of each of the people profiles in the first subset of people profiles.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein the indication informs each people profile in the first subset of people profiles of a name of the first social circle.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise maintaining people profile confidentiality within the second subset of people profiles such that people profiles of the second subset of people profiles are not informed of identities of other people profiles in the second subset of people profiles.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise:
transmitting an invitation message to people profiles of the user in the social networking service;
receiving a confirmation indication from at least one people profile; and
including the at least one people profile in the first subset of people profiles in response to receiving the confirmation indication.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprise receiving message text from the user, the invitation message including the message text.

8. The system of claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprise:
providing standard message text for display to the user; and
receiving user input editing the standard message text to provide edited message text, the invitation message including the edited message text.

9. The system of claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprise:
determining that an email address of an intended recipient of the invitation message is not associated with a particular email service; and
generating the invitation message as a plain text email message in response to the determining.

10. The system of claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprise:
determining that an email address of an intended recipient of the invitation message is associated with a particular email service;
determining that the intended recipient is not a user of the social networking service; and
generating the invitation message to include an advertisement for the social networking service in response to the determining.

11. The system of claim 6 , wherein the operations further comprise:
determining that an email address of an intended recipient of the invitation message is associated with a particular email service;
determining that the intended recipient is a user of the social networking service; and
generating the invitation message as a rich text message in response to the determining.

12. The system of claim 1 , wherein at least one people profile of the first subset of people profiles is also a people profile of the second subset of people profiles.

13. The system of claim 1 , wherein the digital content item comprises at least one of text, an image file, a video file, an audio file, and a uniform resource indicator (URI).

14. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise expanding the first subset of people profiles to include additional people profiles in response to user input.

15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise:
receiving a search query from a searching user;
processing the search query;
identifying the first social circle based on processing the search query; and
transmitting data corresponding to the first social circle for display to the searching user.

16. The system of claim 15 , wherein the searching user is a user of the social networking service.

17. The system of claim 15 , wherein the searching user is a user of the Internet.

18. The system of claim 15 , wherein the operations further comprise:
receiving a request from the searching user, the request comprising a request to join the first social circle;
transmitting the request to the user;
receiving an approval indication from the user; and
in response to receiving the approval indication, adding a people profile of the searching user to the first subset of people profile.

19. The system of claim 1 , wherein one or more people profiles of the first subset of people profiles or the second subset of people profiles is a non-social networking contact of the user profile.

20. A non-transitory computer storage medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by data processing apparatus cause the data processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:
transmitting contact data for displaying graphical representations of contacts for display to a user, the contacts being contacts of a profile of the user within a computer-implemented social networking service;
generating a first social circle of the user, the first social circle comprising a first subset of contacts of the profile within the social networking service and defining a first distribution for a digital content item of the prof

Assignees

• Smarr Joseph
• Adams Paul
• Ben-Yair Shimrit
• Terleski Jonathan
• Sladden Mandy R
• Google Inc

Inventors

• Smarr Joseph
• Adams Paul
• Ben-Yair Shimrit
• Terleski Jonathan
• Sladden Mandy R

Classifications

• G06Q10/40 Primary

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

• H04L67/1044

  Group management mechanisms  (management of multicast group membership H04L12/185; reconfiguring of node membership in a computing system to eliminate errors G06F11/1425) · CPC title

• H04L67/10

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title

• H04L65/403 Primary

  Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences (data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15) · CPC title

• G06Q50/50

  Business processes related to the communications industry (charging, metering or billing arrangements specially adapted for data communications H04L12/14; telephonic communication involving automatic or semi-automatic exchanges H04M3/00; arrangements for metering, time-control or time indication H04M15/00; prepayment telephone systems H04M17/00; accounting or billing for wireless communication networks H04W4/24) · CPC title