Custom Message Timelines for Private Social Messaging
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users of conventional messaging platforms face difficulties in saving and revisiting messages privately, as liking or reposting actions are public and transient, making it hard to consume content at a later time without revealing their engagement.
Innovation Solution
Implementing custom, user-defined timelines where users can save messages for offline viewing and private consumption, with options to share selectively, and receive notifications based on engagement criteria, allowing for private message management and caching of content.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If users like or repost messages to save them for later viewing, then they can find the messages again, but their engagement becomes public to others viewing the message
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the message interaction system into two distinct functions: public engagement (liking, reposting) and private saving (bookmarking). The bookmark feature creates a separate, private collection mechanism that does not broadcast the user's engagement, thus resolving the contradiction between message retrieval capability and privacy protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a bookmarking system as an intermediary mechanism between the user and the message. This intermediary allows users to save messages for later viewing without requiring public engagement actions, effectively mediating between the need for message retrieval and the desire for privacy.
2Ease of operation
If users save messages to a custom timeline for later viewing, then they can revisit content privately, but the system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the custom timeline feature multi-functional: it serves as both a private saving mechanism and a configurable notification system. Users can subscribe to different accounts and set various notification criteria, allowing one system to handle multiple user needs (private saving, selective following, engagement monitoring) without requiring separate complex systems for each function.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically monitors engagements with saved messages and provides notifications when trigger conditions are met, eliminating the need for users to manually check each message. This self-service approach reduces operational complexity for users while maintaining sophisticated functionality.
3Loss of information
If the system monitors engagements with saved messages and provides notifications, then users stay informed about message activity, but energy and computational resources are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements partial monitoring by allowing users to select specific notification criteria (e.g., notify only on replies, not on all likes). This partial action approach enables the system to monitor only the engagement types that users explicitly care about, reducing computational resource consumption while still providing valuable engagement information.
Solution Approach 2:
Users pre-configure their notification preferences and trigger conditions before the system begins monitoring. This preliminary action allows the system to set up efficient monitoring filters in advance, avoiding the need to process and evaluate all possible engagement types continuously, thus reducing ongoing computational resource usage.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for creating and managing custom timelines. One of the methods includes receiving, from a user using a user account of a social messaging platform, input to a user interface displaying a message timeline of a social messaging platform, the user input requesting that the platform save a first message from the message timeline and, in response, saving the message to a custom timeline of the user account, wherein saving the message to the custom timeline includes associating with the custom timeline an identifier that identifies the first message; monitoring engagements by one or more other accounts with the first message with respect to one or more notification criteria; and in response to determining that the monitored engagements satisfy a trigger condition, providing a notification to the user account associated with the first message through the custom timeline.