Social Network Contact Sub-group Filtering for Content Relevance
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Solution Overview
Problem
As social networking services grow, users face overwhelming amounts of digital content, including irrelevant and low-quality content, such as spam, which can clutter their stream pages and reduce the relevance of the information they receive.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system where users can create and manage social circles, allowing them to filter digital content on a per-contact and per-content-type basis, enabling them to associate contacts with sub-groups to control what content is displayed, ensuring that only relevant content from specific contacts and types is shown on their stream page.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If users receive all digital content from their social network contacts, then the completeness of information is improved, but the stream page becomes overwhelmed with irrelevant and low-quality content
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments contacts into different sub-groups (first sub-group, second sub-group, third sub-group) with different content filtering rules. Users can assign contacts to specific sub-groups and control what content types are filtered for each sub-group, allowing selective reception of content while maintaining completeness of relevant information.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different content filtering qualities to different contacts based on their sub-group assignments. Each contact can have customized filtering rules applied to them, allowing users to receive all content types from some contacts while filtering specific content types from others, thereby maintaining information completeness while eliminating harmful content.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If users manually filter content from each contact, then the quality of displayed content is improved, but the complexity of content management increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges content filtering management into a unified system where users manage contacts and their sub-group assignments in one place. The filtering rules are automatically applied based on contact-sub-group associations, eliminating the need for separate manual filtering configurations for each contact and reducing management complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal contact management system that handles multiple functions: organizing contacts into sub-groups, assigning filtering rules, and automatically applying content filtering. This multi-functional system replaces multiple separate filtering mechanisms, simplifying content management while maintaining high content quality.
3Loss of information
If users organize contacts into multiple sub-groups with different filtering rules, then the relevance of displayed content is improved, but the complexity of the distribution scheme increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the contact list into multiple sub-groups (first, second, third sub-groups) where each sub-group has specific content filtering characteristics. This segmentation allows users to organize contacts by relationship type or content preference, improving content relevance while maintaining a structured and manageable distribution scheme.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a dynamic distribution scheme where users can flexibly assign contacts to different sub-groups and adjust filtering rules as needed. The system adapts to user preferences and changing relationships, allowing dynamic reorganization of contacts and filtering rules without requiring complete reconfiguration, thus managing complexity while maintaining relevance.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs for defining a first group of contacts, the first group of contacts having been specified by a first user of a social networking service and including contacts of the first user within the social networking service, each contact in the first group of contacts being associated with a first sub-group of contacts within the first group of contacts, the first group of contacts being associated with a distribution scheme for digital content provided by the first user within the social networking service, and associating, based on first input provided by the first user, one or more contacts of the first sub-group of contacts with a second sub-group of contacts within the first group of contacts, the second sub-group of contacts including contacts for which at least some digital content distributed to the first user is filtered from display to the first user.