Inner-circle social sourcing

摘要

A social networking environment supporting collaborative social interaction is disclosed. The social networking environment may be implemented by a computing system including a number of client computing devices and a server system that communicate with each other via a communications network. User profile and geographic location information associated with users of the social networking environment may be shared with each other. Users may request commentary from other users regarding a target user. Users may receive and fulfill requests for commentary to facilitate social interactions between two or more other users. Users may define an inner-circle of users from which commentary may be requested by that user.

主权项

1. A computer implemented method, comprising:
obtaining geographic position information and user profile information associated with each user of a plurality of mobile devices; identifying a first set of users of a social networking environment having a first relationship status type relative to a subject user of the plurality of mobile devices, the first set of users defining an inner-circle of social acquaintances established by the subject user; identifying a second set of users of the social networking environment having a second relationship status type relative to the subject user, the second set of users defining a broader group of users outside of the inner-circle of social acquaintances; receiving a request by the subject user for commentary regarding a target user of the plurality of mobile devices, the target user selected from among the second set of users having the second relationship status type relative to the subject user; providing a viewer environment for presentation via a graphical user interface of a computing device of a third party user, the viewer environment including the user profile information, and including icons representing a geographic position for each of the users of the plurality of mobile devices based on the received geographic position information; responsive to the request by the subject user for commentary regarding the target user, prompting the third party user to provide a user input via the viewer environment for commentary regarding the target user, the third party user selected from among the first set of users having the first relationship status type relative to the subject user and identified based on a relationship status between the third party user and the target user within the social networking environment; obtaining the user input via the viewer environment from the third party user, the user input including commentary regarding the target user of the plurality of mobile devices and indicating the subject user of the plurality of mobile devices that is to receive the commentary; and providing the commentary to the mobile device of the subject user as a private message, the private message identifying the target user.