Social Network Timeline Interface for Chronological Data Organization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Social networking systems face challenges in presenting historical user information effectively, as profile pages become cluttered with large volumes of data, making it difficult for viewers to find and organize information related to specific time periods, such as old classmates wanting to view information from shared university times.
Innovation Solution
A display interface that presents user information in a chronological timeline, allowing users to select and organize data into timeline units based on relevance and events, with a ranking method to highlight the most relevant information, enabling structured event-specific information capture and custom event creation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If the social networking system accumulates more information about the user over time, then the quantity of information increases, but the ease of locating older information decreases due to limited display space on the profile page
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments user information by time periods, creating distinct chronological sections (e.g., college years, current job) that can be independently navigated. This allows viewers to locate specific historical information without searching through the entire profile, resolving the contradiction between accumulating information and maintaining ease of access to older content.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension to the profile display by organizing information chronologically rather than just by category. This adds a time-based navigation layer that enables efficient access to historical information while preserving the ability to accumulate and display large volumes of data across different time periods.
2Device complexity
If the profile page displays information segmented by information type, then the organization by category is maintained, but the ability to view different types of information related to a particular time period concurrently is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces time period markers as intermediary elements that bridge different types of information. These markers allow photos, status updates, and other content from the same time period to be grouped and viewed together, even though they belong to different information categories. This resolves the contradiction by providing a new organizational layer that maintains categorical segmentation while enabling temporal consolidation.
3Quantity of substance
If a user has a large amount of information in a particular time period, then the quantity of historical data increases, but the difficulty of selecting the most relevant information for presentation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by allowing different selection criteria and presentation styles for different time periods. Each time period can be curated independently, with the most relevant information highlighted based on its specific context and significance. This resolves the contradiction by making the information selection process localized to each time period rather than requiring global selection across all data.
Data Source
AI summary
The invention provides a display interface in a social networking system that enables the presentation of information related to a user in a timeline or map view. The system accesses information about a user of a social networking system, including both data about the user and social network activities related to the user. The system then selects one or more of these pieces of data and/or activities from a certain time period and gathers them into timeline units based on their relatedness and their relevance to users. These timeline units are ranked by relevance to the user, and are used to generate a timeline or map view for the user containing visual representations of the timeline units organized by location or time. The timeline or map view is then provided to other users of the social networking system that wish to view information about the user.