Facebook, Inc.

Michael Steven Vernal

David Brookes Morin

Wei Zhu

James M Leszczenski

Joshua E Elman

Austin Haugen

Mark E Zuckerberg

Xin Liu

Yofay Kari Lee

Spencer G Ahrens

Ray C He

Chaitanya Mishra

Ruchi Sanghvi

Charles Duplain Cheever

Samuel Wharton Lessin

Thomas Stocky

David Ebersman

Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen

Ming Hua

Carl Philip Sjogreen

Paul Tarjan

Avichal Garg

Vladimir Fedorov

Edward Kenneth O'Neil

Dan Ionut Fechete

Yang Qin

Naitik Hemant Shah

Luke Jonathan Shepard

Yu Huang

Alex Himel

Lu D Chen

Arthur George Rudolph

Saurabh Prafulla Chakradeo

Xinpan Xiao

Dharmesh A Bhatt

Brynn Shepherd

Bret Steven Taylor

Deborah Liu

Gerald Richard Cain

Yuji Higaki

Casey Maloney Rosales Muller

Mark William Kinsey

Austin Daniel Haugen

Edward Kenneth O'neil

Naitik Shah

A social networking system contains information describing information about users of the social networking system and about various connections among the users. When a user of the social networking system accesses an external website, the external website may send the user a web page containing markup language with instructions to retrieve information associated with a user from a social networking system. The client device processes the annotations and sends a request for social information related to the user to a social networking system, subject perhaps to privacy settings in the social networking system. The user's browser uses the information obtained from the social networking system in response to the request to render the markup language document for display on the user's computer system. This process allows the external website to use information from the social networking system to enhance the user's experience on the external website.

Markup language for incorporating social networking system information by an external web site

Methods for facilitating financial transactions include facilitating or otherwise increasing the ease and speed of checkout processes. In particular, one or more implementations comprise an e-commerce payment facilitator that acts as an intermediary between a commerce application and a payment gateway. The e-commerce payment facilitator can provide stored payment information to a commerce application based on a few simple selections by a user. This allows a user to easily and securely complete commerce transactions, which simplifies the user's checkout experience and reduces barriers to purchase. Furthermore, the e-commerce payment facilitator can pass payment details to the commerce application's payment gateway. In addition to the foregoing, methods involve dynamically and intelligently providing a user the option of using payment information stored by the network application.

Dynamically providing a third-party checkout option

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a client system of a first user of the communication system, an input from the first user to access a card-stack interface, generating a card cluster comprising a plurality of cards, each card comprising a suggested query referencing a query-domain and one or more query-filters, wherein each query-filter references one or more objects associated with the communication system, and wherein each card in the card cluster is ranked within the card cluster based on a predicted click-thru rate (CTR) for the card based on one or more user-engagement factors, and sending, to the client system in response to the input from the first user, the card-stack interface for display to the first user, wherein the card-stack interface comprises the card cluster, the cards of the card cluster being ordered based on the rankings associated with the cards.

Ranking recommended search queries

Markup language for incorporating social networking system information by an external website

Particular embodiments of a method comprise analyzing a message to perform sentiment analysis with respect to at least a portion of the message. One or more sentiments associated with the at least a portion of the message may then be identified. One or more ideograms (e.g., written characters, symbols or images that represent an idea or thing), each corresponding to an identified sentiment, may then be suggested to a user for insertion into a message. Upon receiving a user selection of one or more of the ideograms in relation to some portion of the message, an association may be saved in a user-specific dictionary linking the user-selected one or more of the ideograms with the portion of the message. In particular embodiments, the sentiment analysis may incorporate social-networking information and/or historical ideogram usage information.

Ideograms based on sentiment analysis

Particular embodiments of a method comprise analyzing an image to classify an expression displayed on a face shown in a captured image. Image analysis may include detecting the face in the image, generating a characterization of features of the face, and classifying the expression based on the characterization. The characterization of facial features may be based on benchmark metrics for a particular expression. One or more ideograms (e.g., written characters, symbols or images that represent an idea or thing) may be selected based on the expression. The selection may be based on one or more match scores for the expression. The match scores may be determined based on an ideogram dictionary or an ideogram usage history. The selected ideograms may then be presented, in association with the face, on a screen for the computing device.

Ideograms for captured expressions

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a client device of an author of a message, a request for a restricted ideogram to be inserted into a message; accessing social-networking information for the author; determining, based on the social-networking information for the author, whether the author is authorized to access the restricted ideogram; accessing social-networking information for a recipient user; determining, based on the social-networking information for the recipient user, whether the recipient user is authorized to access the restricted ideogram; and if the author and the recipient user are authorized to access the restricted ideogram, then sending, to the client device of the author, information to insert the restricted ideogram into the message.

Controlling access to ideograms

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a client device of a user of an online social network, an input from the user to access a card-stack interface, generating a plurality of cards, where each card comprises a suggested query referencing a query-domain associated with the online social network and one or more query-filters, and where each query-filter references one or more objects of the online social network, each card further comprising one or more search results corresponding to the suggested query, and each search result referencing an object of the online social network matching the suggested query of the card; and sending, to the client device in response to the input from the first user, the card-stack interface for display to the first user, wherein the card-stack interface comprises one or more of the generated cards.

Generating card stacks with queries on online social networks

A user device requests a web page from a web server of a third-party website, which is separate from a social networking system. The web server from the third-party website sends a markup language document for the requested web page to the user device which includes an instruction for a browser application running on the user device to incorporate information obtained from the social networking system within the web page. Based on the instruction in the received markup language document, the user device requests personalized content from the social networking system, which generates the requested personalized content based on social information about the user. The user device then renders the web page with the personalized content contained in a frame and displays the rendered web page and the frame to the user.

Personalizing a web page outside of a social networking system with content from the social networking system

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 user is required to provide authentication information. If the login status of the user account indicates that the user is logged in, social network information is provided to the user via an external system, subject to the privacy settings of users of the social networking system. If the user logs out from an external system, the user is also logged out from the social networking system.

Single login procedure for accessing social network information across multiple external systems

An external system (such as a website) that interacts with users communicates with a social networking system to access information about the users, who may also be users of the social networking system. If a privacy setting is changed in the social networking system, and the change applies to information that has been shared with an external system, the change is enforced at the external system. For example, the external system may be notified that the information is invalid and must be deleted, or the external system may periodically request the information so that changes to the privacy settings are eventually experienced at the external systems. When an external system again needs the information, whether expired naturally or actively invalidated by the social network, the external system sends a new request for the information, which is subject to the (possibly revised) privacy settings.

Dynamic enforcement of privacy settings by a social networking system on information shared with an external system

A social networking system includes a mechanism for incorporating nodes in the social graph, where the nodes are associated with a web page. Each web page includes one or more tags, which contain meta-information for defining the node in the social networking system, such as the type of the node. The social networking system retrieves the tags from the markup language document and stores their information in connection with the node for the web page. The web page may be outside of the social networking system's domain and may be operated by an entity other than the social networking operator; thus, third parties can define, create, and maintain nodes that are then used by the social networking system. Users may then interact with the nodes on websites outside of the social networking system, and these interactions are tracked by and reflected back within the social networking system.

Social graph that includes web pages outside of a social networking system

Particular embodiments of a method comprise providing one or more ideograms (e.g., written characters, symbols or images that represent an idea or thing) for insertion into a message. A request may be received from a user for a restricted one of the ideograms. A determination may be made as to whether the user is authorized to access the restricted ideogram. This determination may be based on whether the user is a member of a group of authorized users, whether an attribute of the user meets a restriction requirement, or whether the request comprises an authorization code or token. If the user is authorized to access the restricted ideogram, then the restricted ideogram may be displayed to the user in association with the message. Otherwise, a restricted-content response may be generated.

In one embodiment, a method includes accessing a social graph that includes a number of nodes and edges connecting the nodes. Each of the edges between two of the nodes representing a single degree of separation between them. The nodes include a first node corresponding to a first user associated with an online social network and a plurality of second nodes that each correspond to a concept or a second user associated with the online social network. The method also includes generating a card cluster including a number of cards. Each card includes a suggested query referencing a query-domain associated with the online social network and zero or more query-filters. Each query-filter references one or more nodes of the plurality of nodes or one or more edges of the plurality of edges.

Ranking recommended search queries on online social networks

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Michael Steven Vernal