Sponsored Story Visibility Control in Social Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Social networking systems face inefficiencies in communicating content to users, as not all users are interested in every action performed by their connections, leading to reduced effectiveness in advertising and content promotion.
Innovation Solution
The system introduces 'sponsored story units' that allow users to promote specific actions or content, with options for users to control and regulate the inclusion of their actions in sponsored stories through settings stored in their profiles, ensuring that only relevant content is shared with interested users.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the social networking system presents stories describing actions performed by connected users to all users, then the quantity of content dissemination is improved, but the relevance of content to individual users deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by customizing the newsfeed content for each user based on their individual interests, connections, and engagement history. Instead of presenting uniform content to all users, the system tailors which stories appear in each user's newsfeed, ensuring that each user receives content with locally optimized relevance to their specific preferences and social context.
2Ease of operation
If users are allowed to control and regulate the inclusion of their actions in sponsored stories through settings, then the user privacy and control are improved, but the complexity of the system increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments user control preferences into distinct categories and settings that can be independently configured. Users can selectively control different aspects of their content visibility and sponsorship preferences separately, rather than having a single monolithic control mechanism. This segmentation makes the system easier to operate by allowing users to adjust only the specific aspects they care about.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements self-service by allowing users to automatically manage their own content visibility preferences through configurable settings stored in their profiles. Once users set their preferences initially, the system automatically applies these preferences to future sponsored story generation without requiring continuous user intervention, reducing the operational complexity over time.
3Productivity
If sponsored stories are generated based on user actions, then the effectiveness of advertising is improved, but the risk of presenting unwanted or irrelevant content to users increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements feedback mechanisms where user responses to sponsored stories and newsfeed content are continuously monitored and used to refine future content presentation. User engagement metrics, clicks, and interactions provide feedback that adjusts the sponsored story generation algorithm, ensuring that content remains relevant and reducing the likelihood of presenting unwanted content while maintaining advertising effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring user preferences and filtering criteria before sponsored stories are generated. User profiles contain pre-established settings about what types of content they find relevant or unwanted, allowing the system to filter and customize sponsored stories before presentation, thereby preventing unwanted content exposure while maintaining advertising effectiveness.
Data Source
AI summary
A social networking system receives a sponsored story request identifying a story describing an action performed by a social networking system user and generates a sponsored story accordingly. The sponsored story request may also include a bid amount and other information for generating a sponsored story from the sponsored story request. When an action is included in a sponsored story presented to a social networking system user, the social networking system notifies the user associated with the action and provides one or more settings regulating inclusion of actions associated with the user in sponsored story requests. For example, settings allow a user to prevent generation of sponsored stories including a specified type of action, a specific action, or multiple actions associated with the user. Hence, the settings allow a user to limit or prevent generation of sponsored stories describing actions associated with the user.