METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR GENERATION OF FLEXIBLE SENTENCES IN A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM

• US 20150242385A1
• Filed: 05/08/2015
• Published: 08/27/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Bao, Ling, van Heuven, Hugo Johan, Miao, Jiangbo
• Granted Patent: US 9,619,456 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/211 Syntactic parsing, e.g. based on context-free grammar [CFG] or unification grammars
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

Some embodiments include a computer-implement method of producing a flexible sentence syntax to facilitate one or more computer applications to generate and publish sentence expressions. For example, the method can include providing a developer interface to define a flexible sentence syntax that controls one or more sentences publishable by an application service. A developer of the application service can customize the flexible sentence syntax including selecting at least one of selectable tokens that is associated with a specific sentence element to incorporate in the flexible sentence syntax. Based on the selected token, a computing device can generate and publish a target sentence according to the flexible sentence syntax on the application service'"'"'s behalf.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing a developer interface to define a flexible sentence syntax that controls one or more sentences publishable by an application;

generating, on the developer interface, one or more selectable tokens associated with a sentence element;

receiving a token selection of one of the selectable tokens to incorporate into the flexible sentence syntax; and

based on the token selection, generating a plurality of relevant flexible sentences for the developer to customize the flexible sentence syntax.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a selectable grammar option on the developer interface to associate with the token selection in the flexible sentence syntax.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a sentence selection of one of the plurality of relevant flexible sentences; and

generating a sentence via the application according a sentence syntax of the sentence selection.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the flexible sentence syntax includes one or more tokens associated with an actor, an edge, a target, the application, or any combination thereof.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the flexible sentence syntax includes one or more tokens associated with one or more property expressions of an actor, an edge, a target, the application, or any combination thereof.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing one or more selectable property expression options on the developer interface for the developer to add one or more property expressions of a specific edge and/or a specific target in the flexible sentence syntax.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein one of the selectable property expression options corresponds to an edge property expression that constraints syntax associated with one or more target tokens and one or more actor tokens.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the edge property expression constraints whether one or more titles of the target tokens or the actor tokens is to be included in the flexible sentence syntax or whether multiple instances of the target tokens or the actor tokens can be included in the flexible sentence syntax.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of relevant flexible sentences are presented on the developer interface according to respective priorities based on corresponding number of impressions, popularity, and/or occurrence within a social networking system.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising pre-fetching the relevant flexible sentences onto a developer device to minimize network delay when respective priorities of the relevant flexible sentences are above a predetermined threshold value.

11. A computer system comprising:

a memory storing executable instructions;

a processor, when configured by the executable instructions, is operable to;

provide a developer interface to define a flexible sentence syntax that controls one or more sentences publishable by an application service;

generate, on the developer interface, one or more selectable tokens associated with a sentence element type in the flexible sentence syntax;

customize the flexible sentence syntax including selecting at least one of the selectable tokens that is associated with a specific sentence element to incorporate in the flexible sentence syntax; and

based on the selected token, configure the application service to generate and publish a target sentence according to the flexible sentence syntax.

12. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the processor, when configured by the executable instructions, is operable to customize the flexible sentence syntax by at least one of inserting, omitting, reordering, or modifying the selected token.

13. The computer system of claim 12, wherein the flexible sentence syntax is customized by modifying the token selection and wherein modifying the token selection includes customizing, via the developer interface, the specific sentence element with one or more property expressions of the specific sentence element.

14. The computer system of claim 12, wherein the flexible sentence syntax is customized by modifying the token selection and wherein modifying the token selection includes customizing, via the developer interface, the specific sentence element with a computed derivative of one or more property expressions of the specific sentence element.

15. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the processor, when configured by the executable instructions, is operable to customize the flexible sentence syntax by inserting an arbitrary text string.

16. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the selected token associated with the specific sentence element is a specific actor token;

and wherein the processor, when configured by the executable instructions, is operable to generate the target sentence by fitting social graph data associated with the specific actor token to the flexible sentence syntax and to generate a preview to simulate a display of a possible target sentence from a perspective of a social connection of the specific actor token prior to publishing the target sentence.

17. The computer system of claim 11, wherein the processor, when configured by the executable instructions, is operable to provide a selectable sentence aggregation option on the developer interface to include in the flexible sentence syntax and to include a summary of activities at once in aggregation according to the selectable sentence aggregation option, when selected.

18. A computer readable data storage memory storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause a computer system to perform a computer-implemented method, the instructions comprising:

instructions for interpreting a sentence element configuration associated with a token in a flexible sentence syntax, wherein the flexible sentence syntax comprises one or more tokens of one or more sentence element types;

instructions for generating a sentence expression by extracting an edge or an object from a social graph of a social networking system relevant to the sentence element configuration; and

instructions for publishing the sentence expression in a digital forum.

19. The computer readable data storage memory of claim 18, wherein the sentence element configuration is an edge configuration associated with an edge token;

and wherein the instructions further comprises;

instructions for determining a temporal marker of the edge; and

instructions for generating a verb tense of the edge in the sentence expression based on the temporal marker.

20. The computer readable data storage memory of claim 18, wherein said extracting includes extracting an aggregate of edges from the social graph relevant to the sentence element configuration;

wherein the sentence element configuration is a summary sentence configuration; and

wherein said generating the sentence expression includes generating a summary sentence based on the aggregate of edges according to the summary sentence configuration.