EXPANDING MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CLUSTERS OF USERS OF AN ONLINE SYSTEM CLUSTERED BASED ON A SPECIFIED DIMENSION

摘要

An online system receives information from an entity identifying a set of users of the online system and groups users included in the set into clusters based on their similarities using a clustering model or algorithm (e.g., k-means clustering) and based on one or more parameters specified by the entity. The online system generates expanded clusters that include additional users in one or more clusters based on similarities between the additional users and users in various clusters. If an additional user is included in multiple expanded clusters, the online assigns the additional user exclusively to an expanded cluster that best fits the user.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving, at an online system, a target audience from an entity, the target audience identifying a set of users of the online system; receiving a dimension along which to cluster the users in the target audience; generating a plurality of clusters of users in the target audience by applying a clustering algorithm to characteristics of users in the target audience to group each of the users of the target audience into one of the plurality of clusters based at least in part on the received dimension; for each of a set of the clusters, expanding the cluster by adding one or more users to the cluster based on one or more similarities between the users in the cluster and the users added to the cluster; identifying one or more added users in one or more of the expanded clusters who are included in in multiple expanded clusters; updating the plurality of clusters by assigning the identified added users to a single expanded cluster; and storing information describing the updated plurality of clusters.