Measuring Social Network-Based Interaction with Web Content External to a Social Networking System

• US 20120151322A1
• Filed: 12/13/2010
• Published: 06/14/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/13/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Lindsay, Robert Taaffe, Himel, Alex
• Granted Patent: US 9,497,154 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/234
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services

Abstract

A social networking system includes a mechanism for generating nodes in the social graph corresponding to web content external to the social networking system. These nodes allow the social networking system to track user interactions within the social networking system about web content external to the social networking system. The web content markup language document(s) include one or more tags, which contain information for defining the node in the social networking system. Users may then interact with the node, and these interactions are tracked by the social networking system. From this, the social networking system generates analytics, which include historical data and user demographic and behavioral information, and which can be provided to the web content provider via the social networking system. A user interface within the social networking system can be used to provide access to the analytics.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

maintaining, by a social networking system, a user account for each of a plurality of users of the social networking system;

generating a node in the social networking system corresponding to web content external to the social networking system, the node associated with a user of the social networking system associated with the web content external to the social networking system;

tracking user actions related to the node associated with the web content external to the social networking system;

generating analytics corresponding to the tracked user actions; and

providing the analytics to the user of the social networking system associated with the web content external to the social networking system.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

maintaining an action log of activity by the plurality of users of the social networking system; and

wherein tracking user actions related to the node comprises determining historical actions between the plurality of users and the node based on the action log.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the web content external to the social networking system comprises a web page.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the web content external to the social networking system comprises domain comprising a plurality of web pages.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the domain is associated with a unique identifier that associates the plurality of web pages with an administrator of the domain.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the user of the social networking system associated with the web content external to the social networking system is identified as an owner of the node.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the user of the social networking system associated with the web content external to the social networking system is an administrator of a domain associated with the web content.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein tracking user actions related to the node comprises determining historical actions between the plurality of users and the node.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the tracked user actions related to the node comprise at least one selected from the group consisting of views, shares, virality, comments, likes, engagement rate over time, and trends.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising generating analytics corresponding to user interactions with the node.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the information about the tracked user actions provided to the user associated with the web content includes demographic and behavioral information for the user associated with the user actions.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the information provided to the user associated with the web content includes data separated by web page.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the information provided to the user associated with the web content includes short term and long term analytics.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving information from the web content external to the social networking system to define the node in the social networking system, comprising:

obtaining at least one markup language document for the web content external to the social networking system; and

identifying one or more tags in the at least one markup language document.