Expanding a social network by the action of a single user

摘要

Techniques for creating a social network are provided. Private relationships that are established (e.g., in the context of instant messaging) may become public by the action of a single user. Each user determines whether they want to be “social” to (or discoverable by) friends of the user's friends. For example, user A is a friend of (i.e., has established a relationship with) user B and user B is a friend of user C, but user A and user C are not friends of each other (i.e., user A and user C have not established a relationship with each other). If user C unilaterally takes an action, then user A is able to see that user C is a friend of user B. User A may then take further actions to attempt to establish a relationship with user C or otherwise contact user C.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
establishing, through a networking service, a plurality of relationships between a second user and a plurality of users that includes a first user that has not established, through the networking service, a relationship with any of the other users in the plurality of users; determining which users of the plurality of users have an online status and which users of the plurality of users have an offline status; determining that a first subset of users of the plurality of users have an online status and that a second subset of users of the plurality of users have an offline status; in response to determining that the first subset of users have an online status, making each user in the first subset of users of the plurality of users viewable by the first user through the networking service; in response to determining that the second subset of users have an offline status, not allowing the first user to view any user in the second subset of users wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.