Facebook, Inc.

Thomas Occhino

Wayne Kao

Akhil Wable

Alexandre Roche

Luke Andrew Delorme

Luke Andrew DeLorme

Olumakinde Adegboyega Adeagbo

To enhance information about connections in a social networking service, embodiments of the invention enable users to reference nodes while posting content to a communication channel. To identify connections within content in the social networking service, users of the social networking service are provided an interface to post content items in communication channels of the social networking service. A trigger received in the interface indicates that a user wishes to identify a connection in the posted content item. Selectable links enable the user to mention another node in the social networking service when posting a content item. As users reference nodes in content items, information about the connections with the referenced nodes is gathered and stored in a database that is indexable and searchable in real-time.

Gathering information about connections in a social networking service

A social networking system receives a query associated with a user and, in response, provides a combined result set comprising objects stored by a social networking system that match the query. The combined result set comprises multiple result sets obtained from different search algorithms. The various objects stored by the social networking system may be of different types representing different concepts, such as user objects, application objects, event objects, location objects, group objects, and hub/page objects, any of which may be included in the result set. The objects of the result set may be further filtered, ordered, and/or grouped based at least in part on known relationships of the user with the objects, such as geographic distances between locations associated with the user and the objects.

Search and retrieval of objects in a social networking system

A social networking system receives a query associated with a user and, in response, provides a combined result set comprising objects stored by a social networking system that match the query. The combined result set comprises multiple result sets obtained from different search algorithms. The various objects stored by the social networking system may be of different types representing different concepts, such as user objects, application objects, event objects, location objects, group objects, and hub/page objects, any of which may be included in the result set. The objects of the result set may be further filtered, ordered, and/or grouped based at least in part on known relationships of the user with the objects, such as geographic distances between locations associated with the user and the objects. In one embodiment, one of the search algorithms identifies second-order connections of the user by referring to a connection index that stores a list of the connections of the users. The search algorithm may also identify a number of mutual connections that the user shares with the second-order connections.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Thomas Occhino