System and method for managing an online social network

• US 20050267940A1
• Filed: 05/26/2004
• Published: 12/01/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 05/26/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Inventors: Predosin, Mirko, Galbreath, Nicholas
• Granted Patent: US 8,572,221 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/629 to features or functions of an application
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• 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 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

An online social network is managed using one server for database management tasks and another server, preferably in a distributed configuration, for CPU-intensive computational tasks, such as finding a shortest path between two members or a degree of separation between two members. The additional server has a memory device containing relationship information between members of the online social network and carries out the CPU-intensive computational tasks using this memory device. With this configuration, the number of database lookups is decreased and processing speed is thereby increased.

Claims

1. A system for managing an online social network, comprising:

a member database containing information about a plurality of members;

a relationship database containing information about relationships between members;

a first server connected to the member database and the relationship database;

a second server connected to the first server and the relationship database; and

a memory device associated with the second server in which information about relationships between members is stored in a predetermined format,

wherein the first server is programmed to;

(i) receive an information exchange request, (ii) issue a processing request to the second server in response to the information exchange request, and (iii) respond to the information exchange request, and

wherein the second server is programmed to;

(i) process the information stored in the memory device in response to the processing request received from the first server, and (ii) return the results of the processing to the first server.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the information about relationships between members is stored in the memory device in an adjacency list format.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein the adjacency list includes a list item for each of the members, each list item containing a member identifier of a member and member identifiers corresponding to friends of the member.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the second server is further programmed to access the relationship database on a periodic basis and update the adjacency list based on any updates made to the relationship database.

5. The system according to claim 3, wherein the second server is further programmed to access the relationship database in real-time and update the adjacency list based on any updates made to the relationship database.

6. A system connected to a network and accessible by a plurality of computers over the network, comprising:

means for storing member information about a plurality of members and relationship information about relationships between members;

a first server connected to said means for storing and programmed to update said means for storing based on inputs received from the computers; and

a second server having a memory device associated therewith in which relationship information between members is stored in a graph data structure format and programmed to process the relationship information stored in the memory device in response to a processing request from the first server.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the relationship information is stored in the memory device in an adjacency list format.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein the member information includes a unique member identifier for each of the members and the adjacency list includes a list item for each of the members, each list item containing a member identifier of a member and member identifiers corresponding to friends of the member.

9. The system according to claim 8, wherein the second server is further programmed to retrieve updates to the relationship information from said means for storing and update the relationship information stored in the memory device based on the updates retrieved from said means for storing.

10. The system according to claim 6, wherein the first server is further programmed to manage requests received from the computers and issue processing requests to the second server in response to the requests received from the computers.

11. The system according to claim 10, wherein the requests received from the computers include a request by one member to view a profile of another member.

12. The system according to claim 6, wherein the processing request issued by the first server includes a request to compute a degree of separation between two members.

13. The system according to claim 6, wherein the second server includes a plurality of distributed servers.

14. The system according to claim 6, further comprising a search database connected to the first server, wherein the search database contains an indexed version of the member information.

15. A method of managing information exchange requests issued by members of an online social network, comprising the steps of:

maintaining a first database containing information about a plurality of members and a second database containing information about relationships between members;

storing information about relationships between members in a graph data structure format; and

processing an information exchange request with a first server and a second server, the first server receiving the information exchange request from a member and issuing a processing request to the second server, and the second server processing the information stored in the memory device in response to the processing request from the first server.

16. The method according to claim 15, further comprising the step of updating the information stored in the memory device based on updates to the second database.

17. The method according to claim 15, wherein the graph data structure format includes an adjacency list format.

18. The method according to claim 15, wherein the step of processing the information exchange request further includes the steps of:

the second server returning results of the processing request to the first server and the first server responding to the information exchange request in part based on the results of the processing request received from the second server.

19. The system according to claim 15, wherein the processing request issued by the first server includes a request to compute a degree of separation between two members.

20. The system according to claim 15, wherein the processing request issued by the first server includes a request to retrieve member identifiers of all members who are within a specified degree of separation from the member who made the information exchange request.