Capturing structured data about previous events from users of a social networking system

摘要

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.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
accessing a social graph, wherein the social group comprises a plurality of nodes representing the user and a plurality of other objects in a social networking system, the social graph further comprising a plurality of connections among the nodes; sending an add event menu to a client device operated by a user in the social graph of the social networking system, the add event menu configured to enable the user to select an event type from a list of event types; receiving, from the client device operated by the user, a user selection of an event type; selecting an event data entry interface based on the event type selected by the user; sending the event data entry interface to the client device for display to the user, the event data entry interface adapted to request and capture structured data for an event of the selected event type, the structured data identifying a representative node of the plurality of nodes of the social graph; receiving, from the client device operated by the user, structured data comprising the user input into the event data entry interface; generating a new timeline unit associated with the user based on the received structured data; and storing the structured data into the social graph in the social networking system by saving a connection from the node representing the user to the representative node, where the connection is of a type based on the event type.