Filtering Content in a Social Networking Service

• US 20110004831A1
• Filed: 12/23/2009
• Published: 01/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/04/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Steinberg, Arieh, Mosseri, Atlam, Deng, Peter, Hupp, Adam, Tonkelowitz, Mark, Sittig, Aaron, Zuckerberg, Mark
• Granted Patent: US 9,110,953 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/753
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24573 using data annotations, e.g. user-defined metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/287 Visualization; Browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 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 Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/454 Content or additional data filtering, e.g. blocking advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/45457 applied to a time segment
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104

Abstract

A social networking service presents information about the social network using multiple feeds in a user interface and provides mechanisms for filtering the content. A content feed includes the most recent content generated by the user'"'"'s connections, and a highlights feed displays content based on importance and relevance. A user may add content to the social networking service through a composer interface. A user may also filter either or both of the content feed and the highlights feed using a filtering interface, which allows selective filtering of the feeds using one or more different types of filters, including as filtering by the source of the content, friends or networks, and/or content type.

Claims

1. A method for displaying content in a social networking service, the method comprising:

receiving by a social networking service a plurality of content items from users of the social networking service;

providing a user interface to a user of the social networking service;

displaying in the user interface some of the content items received from users to whom the user is connected in the social networking service;

providing to the user one or more selectable filters, each filter specifying a criteria to be applied to the content items;

receiving a selection of a filter from the user; and

responsive to the selection of the filter, updating the user interface to display only those content items consistent with the selected filter.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more selectable filters comprises one or more groups of users of the social networking service.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein at least one of the groups of users is created automatically based on at least one common characteristic of the users.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more selectable filters includes a user-defined list of other users.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more selectable filters include one or more content filters that identify a type of content from the received content items.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein one of the content filters identifies one or more photos.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein one of the content filters identifies one or more videos.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein one of the content filters identifies text updates.

9. The method of claim 5, wherein one of the content filters identifies one or more hyperlinks.

10. The method of claim 5, wherein one of the content filters identifies content from an application within the social networking service.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein displaying in the user interface some of the content items received from users comprises displaying a feed.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the feed comprises a content feed that includes a subset of recent content items provided by other users to whom the user has a connection.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the content items in the content feed are organized in reverse chronological order.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein the content items in the content feed are displayed as comments from the users who provided the content items.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the feed comprises a highlights feed that includes a subset of content items selected by the social networking service as a function of an affinity between the user and the content items.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the content items in the highlights feed are organized at least in part by an affinity between the particular user and the content item.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein the content items in the highlights feed include stories about actions taken by other users.

18. The method of claim 11, wherein the feed further includes advertisements.

19. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

displaying in the user interface a composer interface that enables the user to upload content items to the social networking service.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the composer interface enables the user to upload a plurality of types of content items, the method further comprising:

responsive to the selection of a filter specifying a type of content, updating the displayed composer interface to facilitate the uploading of the type of content specified by the selected filter.

21. A method for displaying content in a social networking service, the method comprising:

receiving content generated by users of a social networking service;

receiving a request for information from a user of the social networking service;

providing a user interface for display to a client device of the user responsive to the request, wherein the user interface comprises;

a content feed that includes a subset of content items provided by other users to whom the user has a connection,

highlights feed that includes a subset of content items selected by the social networking service as a function of an affinity between the user and the content items or between the user and other users of the social networking system, and

one or more selectable filters, each filter specifying a criteria to be applied to the content items;

receiving a selection of a filter from the user; and

responsive to the selection, updating the user interface to be displayed by the client device, wherein at least one of the content feed and the highlights feed are updated to include only those content items consistent with the selected filter.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the user interface further comprises a composer interface that enables the user to upload a plurality of types of content in the social networking service.

23. The method of claim 22, further comprising:

responsive to the selection of a filter specifying a type of content, updating the displayed composer interface to facilitate the uploading of the type of content specified by the selected filter.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein the one or more selectable filters comprises one or more groups of users of the social networking service.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein the one or more selectable filters comprises one or more content filters that identify a type of content from the received content items.

26. A computer system for displaying content in a social networking service, the system comprising:

a communications module configured to receive a plurality of content items from users of the social networking service;

a user interface generating module configured to provide a user interface to a user of the social networking service via the communications module, to display in the user interface one or more content items received from users to whom the user is connected in a social networking service, and to provide one or more selectable filters, each filter specifying a criteria to be applied to the content items;

wherein the communications module is further configured to receive a selection of a filter from the user, and wherein, responsive to the selection of the filter, the user interface generating module is further configured to update the user interface to display only those content items consistent with the selected filter.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the one or more selectable filters comprises one or more groups of users of the social networking service.

28. The system of claim 26, wherein at least one of the groups is created automatically based on at least one common characteristic of the users.

29. The system of claim 26, wherein the one or more selectable filters comprises one or more content filters that identify a type of content from the received content items.