Load Balancing Web Service by Rejecting Connections
Granted: September 11, 2014
Application Number:
20140258521
A load balancer allocates requests to a pool of web servers configured to have low queue capacities. If the queue capacity of a web server is reached, the web server responds to an additional request with a rejection notification to the load balancer, which enables the load balancer to quickly send the rejected request to another web server. Each web server self-monitors its rejection rate. If the rejection rate exceeds a threshold, the number of processes concurrently running on the web…
AUDIENCE MANAGEMENT IN A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM
Granted: September 11, 2014
Application Number:
20140258410
A social networking system manages the accessibility of content items provided by users and directed to various audiences in the social networking system. An author provides the social networking system with a content item, a content item tag indicating an association between the content item and a tagged user, and a definition of a first audience who may view the content item. The social networking system then allows the tagged user to provide a definition of a second audience who may…
Compatibility Scoring of Users
Granted: September 11, 2014
Application Number:
20140258287
The compatibility score of members of a social network is based on the compatibility of their expressed interests. The compatibility score between any two interests is calculated as the log of the estimated probability that a member of the social network will express both interests divided by the product of: (i) the estimated probability that a member of the social network will express the first of the two interests and (ii) the estimated probability that a member of the social network…
QUERYING FEATURES BASED ON USER ACTIONS IN ONLINE SYSTEMS
Granted: September 4, 2014
Application Number:
20140250137
Online systems, for example, social networking systems store features describing relations between entities represented in the online system. The information describing the features is represented as a graph. The online system maintains a cumulative feature graph and an incremental feature graph. Feature values based on recent user actions are stored in the incremental graph and feature values based on previous actions are stored in the cumulative graph. Periodically, the information…
TIMELINE VIEW FILTERED BY PERMISSIONS AND AFFINITY TO VIEWER
Granted: September 4, 2014
Application Number:
20140250136
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 whether the…
AGGREGATING SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM USER INFORMATION FOR TIMELINE VIEW
Granted: September 4, 2014
Application Number:
20140250114
The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline 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…
REAL TIME CONTENT SEARCHING IN SOCIAL NETWORK
Granted: September 4, 2014
Application Number:
20140250101
Indexing and retrieving real time content in a social networking system is disclosed. A user-term index includes user-term partitions, each user-term partition comprising temporal databases. As a post is received from a user, a user identifier, a post identifier, and a post is extracted. An object store communicatively coupled to a temporal database for recently received content is queried to determine whether terms in the post has already been stored. A term identifier is stored in the…
PREDICTIVE PRE-DECODING OF ENCODED MEDIA ITEM
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140245219
Displaying a plurality of encoded media items on a device includes: detecting that a first scrolling action has been completed; determining a predicted next encoded media item to be displayed; obtaining the predicted next encoded media item from a first memory; pre-decoding the predicted next encoded media item to generate a pre-decoded media item; storing the pre-decoded media item in a second memory, the second memory having lower latency than the first memory; receiving an indication…
Single Login Procedure For Accessing Social Network Information Across Multiple External Systems
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140245407
A social networking system contains information describing users of the social network and various connections among the users. A user can access multiple external systems that communicate with the social networking system to access information about the users of the social networking system. Login status of the user account on the social networking system is maintained. If the login status of the user account on the social networking system indicates that the user is not logged in, the…
Time-Sensitive Content Update
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140245352
In one embodiment, a method includes determining available media content from one or more content sources and providing at least a portion of the available media content for display in a programming guide on a display device of a user. The programming guide includes a plurality of entries each associated with one of the available media content. The method further includes determining that an update action button should be displayed on the display device, providing the update action…
TARGETING ADVERTISEMENTS TO LOGGED OUT USERS OF AN ONLINE SYSTEM
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244386
An online system stores a plurality of browsing histories for its users, each browsing history associated with a user's user identifying information. Based on a request for an advertisement from a client device that identifies a user and indicates the user does not have an existing session with the online system, the online system compares the identified user's browsing history to other stored browsing histories. Users associated with stored browsing histories similar to the identified…
Determining User Subscriptions
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140245186
In one embodiment, a method includes accessing a list of media subscriptions offered by a content source, providing one or more questions for display on a display device of a user, receiving one or more answers to the one or more questions, and determining a media subscription based on the one or more answers.
Time-Delayed Publishing
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244753
In one embodiment, a method includes receiving an indication that a user of the social-networking system watched at least a portion of a program, determining that the user intended to watch the program, and generating a story in response to the determination. The story is published to the social-networking system a predetermined amount of time after receiving the indication.
Linking Multiple Entities Associated with Media Content
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244752
In one embodiment, a method includes determining that media content being viewed by a user comprises a plurality of entities, accessing information indicative of the plurality of entities, and querying a social graph of the social-networking system for social content associated with each of the plurality of entities and one or more other users of the social-networking system. The social graph includes user nodes that are each associated with a particular user of the social-networking…
Aggregating Likes to a Main Page
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244751
In one embodiment, a method includes accessing a social graph of a social-networking system, and determining, from the social graph, that a user “likes” a first page associated with a particular version of a media content. The social graph includes a plurality of nodes and edges connecting the nodes. The nodes include user nodes that are each associated with a particular user of the social-networking system. The method further includes determining that one or more other versions of…
DETERMINING PHRASE OBJECTS BASED ON RECEIVED USER INPUT CONTEXT INFORMATION
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244622
A composer interface allows a user to provide input, such as text data, to the social networking system. To reduce the number of inputs for a user to provide to the social networking system, one or more phrase objects are presented to the user when providing input. A phrase object includes a group of objects that users have previously provided to the social networking system. The social networking system presents phrase objects to the user that match at least a portion of the received…
RANKING DATA ITEMS BASED ON RECEIVED INPUT AND USER CONTEXT INFORMATION
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244621
A composer interface allows a user to provide input, such as text data, to the social networking system. Based on context information associated with the user and received input, the social networking system presents candidate data items to the user. Selecting a candidate data item allows the user to include the candidate data item in the input. Examples of context information include: users connected to the user, profile information associated with the user, and geographic information…
INTELLIGENT DATA CACHING FOR TYPEAHEAD SEARCH
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244619
Techniques for providing low latency incremental search results are disclosed herein. According to one embodiment, a method for incremental search includes receiving a first search query from a user, obtaining a plurality of first search results in response to the first search query from an index server, determining whether the plurality of first search results are a substantially exhausted list of results for the first search query, and caching the plurality of first search results in a…
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING CACHE CONSISTENT REGIONAL CLUSTERS
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244584
When multiple regional data clusters are used to store data in a system, maintaining cache consistency across different regions is important for providing a desirable user experience. In one embodiment, there is a master data cluster where all data writes are performed, and the writes are replicated to each of the slave data clusters in the other regions. Appended to the replication statements are invalidations for cache values for the keys whose values have been changed in the master…
PROVIDING ADVERTISEMENT CONTENT VIA AN ADVERTISEMENT PROXY SERVER
Granted: August 28, 2014
Application Number:
20140244406
An advertisement (ad) proxy server acts as a proxy for serving content of third-party ads to users of an online system, reducing data leakage from users to advertisers. The ad proxy server acts as an intermediate storage and access point for content included in advertisement, such as images and videos. When an advertisement from an advertiser is selected for presentation by the online system, an ad tag identifying the location of the content for the selected ad is retrieved and used to…
