Interest Lists for Social Network Content Organization

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Solution Overview

Problem

Conventional social networking services lack a mechanism to group user connections based on specific topics, making it difficult for users to curate and view content related to particular interests.

Innovation Solution

The implementation of interest lists within the social networking system, where users can create or curate lists associated with specific topics, allowing members to post relevant content, and subscribers to receive this content as a dedicated feed, with options for manual addition or automatic suggestions based on user interests.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Ease of operation

If conventional social networking services are used without interest lists, then the system structure remains simple, but users cannot efficiently organize or access content by specific topics

Engineering Contradiction:

ImproveContent organization and accessVSAvoidSystem structure

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments users' connections into topic-based interest lists, allowing content to be organized by specific subjects rather than mixing all connections together. This enables users to curate and access content related to particular interests separately, improving content organization without requiring complete system restructuring

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The interest list acts as an intermediary layer between users and content, providing a structured way to organize and access posts from connections based on topic relevance. This mediator enables efficient content retrieval without directly modifying the underlying social graph structure

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Manufacturing precision

If manual curation of interest lists is implemented, then content relevance improves, but user time and effort increase

Engineering Contradiction:

ImproveContent relevanceVSAvoidCuration time

Core Design Contradiction:

Manufacturing precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by automatically suggesting potential members for interest lists based on analysis of user posts and interests. This pre-curation work reduces the manual effort required while maintaining content relevance, as users only need to review and confirm suggestions rather than manually evaluate each potential member

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system uses feedback from user posts, likes, and interactions to automatically identify and suggest relevant members for interest lists. This feedback mechanism enables the system to learn user preferences and perform curation tasks automatically, reducing manual time investment while improving content relevance over time

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS8943136B2Creating and sharing interest lists in a social networking system

Publication Date: 2015.01.27 META PLATFORMS INC

AI summary

A social networking service allows a user of the service to create an interest list associated with a topic of interest, where the interest list includes members that may post content via the social networking service. Members of the interest list may post content associated with the topic. Other users of the social network service may subscribe to the list, and these subscribers may then receive a feed that contains the content posted by the members of the interest list.