Displaying social networking system user information via a historical newsfeed

US8832560B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• FACEBOOK, INC. · US

Inventors

• Raylene Kay Yung · San Francisco, US
• Ryan Case · Palo Alto, US
• Jeff Huang · Mountain View, US
• Samuel Lessin · San Francisco, US
• Ryan David Mack · Waltham, US
• Paul M. McDonald · Palo Alto, US
• Serkan Piantino · New York, US
• Arun Vijayvergiya · New York, US
• Josh Wiseman · San Francisco, US
• Steven E. Young · Mountain View, US
• Mark E. Zuckerberg · Palo Alto, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Sep 21, 2011
• Grant date: Sep 9, 2014
• Expiry date: Nov 22, 2032

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q50/01
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline or map view. The system accesses information about a user of a social networking system, including both data about the user and social network activities related to the user. The system then selects one or more of these pieces of data and/or activities from a certain time period and gathers them into timeline units based on their relatedness and their relevance to users. These timeline units are ranked by relevance to the user, and are used to generate a timeline or map view for the user containing visual representations of the timeline units organized by location or time. The timeline or map view is then provided to other users of the social networking system that wish to view information about the user.