CLUSTERING A USER'S CONNECTIONS IN A SOCIAL NETWORKING SYSTEM

摘要

A user's connections in a social networking system are grouped into a number of clusters based on a measure of the connections' relationships, or affinity, to each other. The affinities among the connections are based on the connections' own relationships and indicate a likelihood that the connections are in the same social circles. The clusters are formed based on the affinities among the user's connections, where the clusters tend to have connections that have relatively high affinities with the other connections the same cluster as compared to the connections who are not in the same cluster. An iterative hierarchical clustering algorithm may be used to collapse the connections into clusters based on affinities between pairs of the connections.