US20220043559A1 - Interfaces for a messaging inbox - Google Patents

Abstract

Exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for representing conversations in a messaging system, where content serves as the organizing feature or primitive of a messaging inbox. In the messaging inbox, a first level of organization allows for the selection of a user account associated with shared content. Upon selecting the user account, the account's content (e.g., photographs, videos, etc.) appear as a second level of organization. Thus, content may be aggregated in two hierarchical tiers: first, on a per-sender basis, and second on a per-content basis. In some embodiments, messages generated in response to the content may be displayed on the content. The content may be made progressively darker as more replies are received. Messages can be made temporary using a number of different ephemerality models. Messages may also be made permanent, with previously shared content shown in respective inbox drawers.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
• This application is a continuation of, claims the benefit of and priority to previously filed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/647,503 filed Jul. 12, 2017, entitled “INTERFACES FOR A MESSAGING INBOX”, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
BACKGROUND
• Communications systems, including messaging services, social networking services, etc. allow users to converse with each other by exchanging messages or other types of conversation content. Conventional systems may organize their interfaces and message data structures around a conversational organization model: messages are organized into conversations based on the conversation's participants, and messages are displayed in a chronological order within the conversation.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
• FIG. 1A depicts an exemplary hierarchical structure for organizing conversation content.
• FIG. 1B depicts an alternative hierarchical structure for organizing conversation content.
• FIG. 2A depicts an exemplary interface for a messaging inbox.
• FIG. 2B depicts an exemplary interface for visualizing received content.
• FIG. 2C depicts an exemplary interface for generating a reply to received content.
• FIG. 2D depicts the visualization interface after a first reply is received.
• FIG. 2E depicts the visualization interface after a second reply is received.
• FIG. 2F depicts the visualization interface after additional replies are received.
• FIG. 2G depicts the visualization interface when advancing to additional content
• FIG. 2H depicts the inbox interface after viewing content.
• FIG. 2I depicts an alternative inbox interface after viewing content.
• FIG. 2J depicts an exemplary content capture interface.
• FIG. 2K depicts an alternative inbox interface for displaying multiple content items.
• FIG. 3 depicts exemplary data structures for organizing conversation content based on the hierarchical structure depicted inFIG. 2B.
• FIG. 4A is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic for processing and displaying conversation content.
• FIG. 4B is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic for representing conversation content in a hierarchical structure.
• FIG. 5A is a block diagram providing an overview of a system including an exemplary centralized communications service;
• FIG. 5B is a block diagram providing an overview of a system including an exemplary distributed communications service;
• FIG. 5C depicts the social networking graph ofFIGS. 8A-8B in more detail;
• FIG. 6 is a block diagram depicting an example of a system for a messaging service;
• FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computing device suitable for use with exemplary embodiments;
• FIG. 8 depicts an exemplary communication architecture; and
• FIG. 9 is a block diagram depicting an exemplary multicarrier communications device.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
• Conventional systems that organize messages by conversations/participants entail certain tradeoffs. For example, in such a conversational system, there is generally an expectation that messages will generate replies; if a user sends a message and receives no replies, the user may feel that their message failed to resonate with conversation participants. Thus, traditional systems may be useful for conducting conversations, but may not be well-suited to sharing content without an expectation of receiving a reply.
• For example,FIG. 1A depicts a model in which an inbox102 is organized into conversations104-i. A conversation may be defined by the participants in the conversation; for example, a first conversation104-1 may be a three-way conversation between three users Jack, John, and Joe, whereas a second conversation104-2 may be a one-on-one conversation between Jack and Jill.
• Each conversation104-imay include a number of messages or content. For example, the first conversation104-1 depicted inFIG. 1A includes several textual messages106-iand several media items108-i. The media items108-imay include, for example, images (e.g., photos or GIFs), videos, audio recordings, hyperlinks, news items, etc.
• Although this organization may be conducive to conducting conversations between participants, there is generally an expectation that any given message106-i,108-iwill invite further conversation. However, in some cases, a user may wish to share content without necessarily sparking a conversation. If other users wish to reply to content, it may be desirable to allow them to do so; nonetheless, replies may not be expected. The organizational model ofFIG. 1A may therefore not be well-suited to general content sharing.
• This organizational model may also create ambiguities regarding replies to media items108-i. For example, consider the scenario where a first user shares a first media item108-1 in the conversation, and a second user shares a second media item108-2 in the conversation. If the media items108-iare then followed by a textual reply106-3 from a third user, it may be unclear whether the third user was responding to the first media item108-1 or the second media item108-2.
• Furthermore, some communications system may implement ephemerality for media items108-i. In other words, the media items108-imay expire or be removed under certain conditions. When ephemerality is time-based (e.g., the media items108-iexpire after a predetermined period of time, such as 24 hours), the model depicting inFIG. 1A may be a reasonable approach. A server facilitating the conversation may store the media item108-i, and the media item108-imay simply be deleted from the server when the predetermined time expires. The media item108-imay also be deleted from the conversation104-i, or may be replaced by a generic placeholder.
• However, ephemerality may also be based on factors other than time. For example, according to exemplary embodiments described herein, ephemerality may be based on the number of times that the media item108-iis viewed (e.g., in a visualization interface). In one example, a media item108-imay be sent to multiple recipients, and may expire after the recipients view the media item once or twice, but do not reply to the media item (a reply may keep the media item alive for a certain amount of time or a certain additional number of views, or while replies continue to be generated).
• In this case, media items108-imay expire at different times for different users. However, in the organizational model depicted inFIG. 1A, the media items108-imay be tied to or associated with a particular conversation104-i. In other words, in the representation on the facilitating server, the server may maintain a media item108-iand an identifier (e.g. at thread ID) for the conversation104-ito which the media item108-ibelongs. When conversation data is requested by a client of one of the participants, the server may not know whether the media item108-ihas expired for this particular user. It may therefore be difficult, in this situation, to expire a media item108-iat the server on a different basis for different users because expiration information may be unavailable.
• On the other hand, if the server tracks media item expiration for individual users, additional data must be stored at the server (consuming additional memory resources) and the server may need to filter each media item in a conversation based on the stored data (consuming additional processing resources). Moreover, when media items expire at different times for different conversation participants, the conversation104-imay appear differently for each conversation participant (e.g., some participants may continue to see that a media item108-iexists at a certain location in the conversation, whereas the media item108-imay be removed for other participants). Thus, some replies in the conversation104-iby participants that can see a media item108-imay not make sense to users who cannot see the media item108-ibecause it has expired.
• In the above example, a conversation based on a specified group of participants serves as the organizational focus. Exemplary embodiments described herein may utilize an alternative organizational model, in which content such as media items108-iserve as primitives or organizing features. Content may be aggregated in two hierarchical tiers: first, on a per-sender basis, and second on a per-content basis. Content may be transmitted to multiple recipients, but replies to content may be added to one-on-one conversations between the sender and the replier. Such an organizational model may be more conducive to sharing content as compared to the model depicted inFIG. 1A.
• For instance,FIG. 1B depicts an alternative hierarchical structure for organizing conversation content. A first level of organization allows for the selection of another user who has shared some content. Once the user is selected, the user's content (e.g., photographs, videos, etc.) appears. Upon selecting the content, any messages generated in response to the content may be displayed. The content therefore serves as the organizing feature of the inbox.
• In this example, aninbox152 is organized based on the sender154-iof each media item108-i; media items108-iare aggregated on a per-sender154-ibasis, rather than being included on a per-conversation basis as in the previous example.
• Upon selecting a sender154-iin theinbox152, the interface may change to a content visualization interface for showing a particular media item108-i(e.g., the first media item108-1). The user may be permitted to reply to the media item, and textual replies106-imay be displayed in conjunction with the media item108-i(e.g., replies may be displayed on top of the media item108-i).
• A user may advance through different media items108-iavailable from a particular user (e.g., active content, such as unexpired ephemeral content). Replies may be associated with the media item108-ithat they were generated in reference to. A user may submit textual replies106-ito a media item108-i, or may reply to a media item108-iwith another media item (e.g., in the case of the third media item108-3 inFIG. 1B). If a user replies to a media item (e.g.,108-2) with another media item (e.g.,108-3), then the media item108-3 for the reply may cause a new conversation based around the replying media item108-3 to be generated. The new conversation may be a one-on-one conversation between the original sender and the replier. In some embodiments, the media items108-iin the visualization interface may be made progressively darker as more replies are received. This progressive darkening is based on the assumption that as more replies are received, the intent of the users shifts from sharing content to conducting a conversation (where the content becomes progressively less relevant than the conversation).
• In some embodiments, ephemeral content that permits a certain number of views may remain unexpired (or a view counter may remain un-incremented) until the user advances through each media item108-iavailable from a particular sender and/or exits the visualization interface. Furthermore, the user may be given an opportunity to reply to a media item108-i, in which case the media item may remain unexpired. For example, the media item108-imay be preserved for a further predetermined period of time, or for a further predetermined number of views, or may continue to remain unexpired during a period in which replies are actively generated for the media item108-i. In further embodiments, some or all messages may be made permanent, with an inbox drawer scrolls to show previously shared content.
• In order to implement the organizational model depicted inFIG. 2B, conversational threads may be stored in “buckets” represented by a relationship tuple of the form (sender, receiver). Individual content threads are represented by a conversation tuple of the form (content ID, sender, receiver).
• One piece of content may be associated with multiple conversations using the content ID. Replies may be organized in a hierarchy under the conversation tuple. This structure may allow ephemerality models to be implemented more efficiently, as it may be simpler to tie ephemerality to the conversation tuple rather than the relationship tuple (as might have been required in conventional models based on conversations identified by the relationship tuple).
• Furthermore, different ephemerality rules may be applied using this model. For example, ephemerality may be made to apply only to content by refraining from showing content associated with the content ID when displaying a conversation based on the conversation tuple. Alternatively or in addition, ephemerality may be applied to content and the subsequent replies by removing an entire conversation tuple from a relationship bucket. It also facilitates different users viewing the content at different times, since the conversation tuple can be removed from a particular sender's bucket without removing the associated content from the server.
• This brief summary is intended to serve as a non-limiting introduction to the concepts discussed in more detail below. However, before discussing further exemplary embodiments, a brief note on data privacy is first provided. A more detailed description of privacy settings and authentication will be addressed in connection with the following Figures.
A Note on Data Privacy
• Some embodiments described herein make use of training data or metrics that may include information voluntarily provided by one or more users. In such embodiments, data privacy may be protected in a number of ways.
• For example, the user may be required to opt in to any data collection before user data is collected or used. The user may also be provided with the opportunity to opt out of any data collection. Before opting in to data collection, the user may be provided with a description of the ways in which the data will be used, how long the data will be retained, and the safeguards that are in place to protect the data from disclosure.
• Any information identifying the user from which the data was collected may be purged or disassociated from the data. In the event that any identifying information needs to be retained (e.g., to meet regulatory requirements), the user may be informed of the collection of the identifying information, the uses that will be made of the identifying information, and the amount of time that the identifying information will be retained. Information specifically identifying the user may be removed and may be replaced with, for example, a generic identification number or other non-specific form of identification.
• Once collected, the data may be stored in a secure data storage location that includes safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to the data. The data may be stored in an encrypted format. Identifying information and/or non-identifying information may be purged from the data storage after a predetermined period of time.
• Although particular privacy protection techniques are described herein for purposes of illustration, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that privacy protected in other manners as well. Further details regarding data privacy are discussed below in the section describing network embodiments.
• Assuming a user's privacy conditions are met, exemplary embodiments may be deployed in a wide variety of messaging systems, including messaging in a social network or on a mobile device (e.g., through a messaging client application or via short message service), among other possibilities. An overview of exemplary logic and processes for engaging in synchronous video conversation in a messaging system is next provided
• As an aid to understanding, a series of examples will first be presented before detailed descriptions of the underlying implementations are described. It is noted that these examples are intended to be illustrative only and that the present invention is not limited to the embodiments shown.
Exemplary Interfaces
• Reference is now made to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals are used to refer to like elements throughout. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding thereof. However, the novel embodiments can be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to facilitate a description thereof. The intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives consistent with the claimed subject matter.
• In the Figures and the accompanying description, the designations “a” and “b” and “c” (and similar designators) are intended to be variables representing any positive integer. Thus, for example, if an implementation sets a value for a=5, then a complete set of components122 illustrated as components122-1 through122-amay include components122-1,122-2,122-3,122-4, and122-5. The embodiments are not limited in this context.
• FIG. 2A depicts anexemplary interface200 for a messaging inbox. For example, theinbox interface200 may be a main or sub menu of an application associated with a communications service, such as a messaging application or social networking application. Theinbox interface200 may be displayed upon initially opening the application and/or when an instruction to display the inbox is received. Theinterface200 may be displayed on a device, such as a mobile device, associated with a user of the communications service.
• Theinterface200 may display one or more account elements202-iassociated with user accounts that the user of the communications service may wish to message. For example, an account element202-imay be displayed for each user account from which content has been recently received, and/or for each user account to which content has been recently sent. The account elements202-imay further include frequently-messaged contacts, contacts of particular relevance, etc. One account element202-imay be displayed for each contact in the user's contacts book, or only a subset of the user's contacts may be associated with an account element202-iin theinterface200.
• Each of the account elements202-imay be associated with account information204-idescribing the user associated with the account element (e.g., a picture, a name, an identifier or handle, when the user last shared content or was most recently active, etc.).
• Shared content that is available from the user associated with the account element202-imay be represented in a content preview206-i. The content preview may include, for example, a thumbnail or reduced size representation of the content, a portion of the content, etc. If the content is ephemeral, then the content preview206-iassociated with the content may be distorted, such as by being blurred, pixelated, etc, in order to prevent the user from viewing the content until it is opened in a visualization interface.
• An account element202-imay be associated with more than one unit of shared content. Accordingly, acontent amount indicator208 may be displayed in connection with the account element208-i. Thecontent amount indicator208 may display or otherwise represent the number of content items currently available from the account associated with the account element202-i.
• Upon receiving a selection of an account element202-i, a content item associated with the account element202-imay be displayed in a visualization interface, such as thevisualization interface210 depicted inFIG. 2B.
• FIG. 2B depicts anexemplary visualization interface210 for visualizing received content. Thevisualization interface210 may include acontent display212 which displays a copy of the content. The copy may be displayed in a format that substantially fills at least one of the dimensions of the display.
• If multiple content items are available, the system may order the content items (e.g., with a most-recently-received content item first, a content item most recently replied-to first) and display the content items in the determined order. One or more content indicator bars214-imay be displayed to indicate how many content items are available, and the location in the list of content items that the user is currently viewing. For example, inFIG. 2B, the first indicator bar214-1 is white to indicate that the user is currently viewing the first content item. A second indicator bar214-2 is colored gray to indicate that a second content item remains to be viewed. The number of indicator bars214-imay correspond to the number displayed in thecontent amount indicator208 of theinbox interface200.
• Thevisualization interface210 may include areply element216 allowing a user to generate a reply to the content item displayed in thecontent display212. Upon receiving a selection of thereply element216, the system may present areply interface218, as depicted for example inFIG. 2C.
• Thereply interface218 may include areply preview220 for previewing textual information (e.g., entered via an on-screen keyboard or other input device) entered as part of the reply.
• The reply may also or alternatively include content, such as an image, video, etc. Accordingly, acontent generator element222 may be provided on thereply interface218 for including content as the reply, or as part of the reply. Selecting thecontent generator element222 may cause a content generation interface to be displayed (see, e.g.,FIG. 2J).
• When the reply in thereply preview220 is acceptable, a finalizeelement224 may be selected to finalize and transmit the reply. After finalizing the reply, the interface may revert to thevisualization interface210, as shown inFIG. 2D. Thereply226 may be displayed, e.g., on the content in thecontent display212, or in another part of thevisualization interface210.
• Asadditional replies226 are received, the additional replies may be displayed on thecontent display212, as shown inFIG. 2E. Optionally, as more and more replies are displayed, thecontent display212 may progressively darken. For example, thecontent display212 inFIG. 2E, with tworeplies226, is darker than thecontent display212 inFIG. 2D, with only one reply. When a relatively large number ofreplies226 are received, as shown for example inFIG. 2F, thecontent display212 may be heavily darkened or the content may disappear altogether.
• The user may interact with thevisualization interface210 to move forward or backward in the list of content available from a particular user. For example, if thevisualization interface210 is displayed on a touch-sensitive display, then the display may register a haptic interaction, such as a tap in a particular area of the display or a swipe in a particular direction, to move forward or backward in the list of content. As the content is advanced, new content or previous content may be displayed in thecontent display212, as shown inFIG. 2G. When the content is advanced, the content indicator bars214-imay be updated to reflect the current location in the list of available content.
• When the user advances past the last content in the list of available content for a given user, the system may advance to the first available content for the next user. Alternatively, the system may revert to theinbox interface200. The system may also revert to theinbox interface200 upon receiving an instruction to exit the visualization interface210 (e.g., by selecting the “X” icon in the visualization interface210).
• After having viewed available content from a particular user, theinbox interface200 may be updated to, e.g., decrement thecontent amount indicator208. Furthermore, if no content remains available for a given user account, the content preview for that account may be removed. For instance, inFIG. 2H, the user has not viewed all available content for the first account element202-1, and thus a content preview206-1 remains available for the first account element202-1. On the other hand, the user has exhausted the available content for the second account element202-2, and thus the content preview206-2 has been removed.
• Instead of displaying nothing in the space available for the content preview206-2, the system may display acontent generation icon228, which allows the user to generate content to be exchanged with the user associated with the account element (202-2, as depicted inFIG. 2I). Selecting thecontent generation icon228 may cause acontent capture interface230 to be displayed, as shown inFIG. 2J.
• Thecontent capture interface230 may present an interface allowing a user to generate or capture content, such as images, a video, an audio recording, etc. Thecontent capture interface230 may include apreview window232 displaying a preview of the content to be captured (e.g., a camera preview window). Thecontent capture interface230 may further include editing icons234-i, allowing content in thepreview window232 to be manipulated, supplemented, etc. Acapture icon236 may cause the content in the preview window to be captured for manipulation through the editing icons234-iand/or to be transmitted as new content.
• As an alternative to the previously-depictedinbox interfaces200, multiple content items and/or thecapture icon236 may be displayed in adrawer238 related to an account element202-i, as shown inFIG. 2K. Thedrawer238 may further include content item previews240-ifor each available content item. Permanently available content items may be associated with a thumbnail or reduced-size view, whereas ephemeral content items may be associated with a distorted view. Optionally, content items older than a predetermined amount of time (e.g., 24 hours) may be replaced with a timestampedview242.
• Next, exemplary data structures and logic for organizing and processing content in conversation threads are described with reference toFIGS. 3-4B.
Exemplary Structures and Techniques for Conversation Threads and Content
• FIG. 3 depicts exemplary data structures for organizing conversation content based on the hierarchical structure depicted inFIG. 1B. As previously noted, media items108-imay serve as primitives or organizing features of the model. Content may be aggregated in two hierarchical tiers: first, on a per-sender basis, and second on a per-content basis.
• In order to organize the content for use with this model, each sender/receiver pair may be associated with a relationship tuple302-iof the form (Sender, Receiver). The relationship tuple302-iconceptually represents a “bucket” into which conversations based on media items108-imay be placed. The conversations may be assigned to a relationship tuple through the use of a conversation tuple304-iof the form (Content ID, Sender, Receiver). The content ID may be a unique identifier assigned to a particular media item108-i. A conversation may be considered to be associated with a relationship tuple302-iwhen the Sender and Receiver of the conversation tuple304-imatches the Sender and Receiver relationship tuple302-i.
• Because the conversation tuple304-iincludes the Content ID, ephemerality may be implemented for the associated media item108-iby storing a single copy of the media item108-i, e.g., at a server, to provide access to each (Sender, Recipient) pair that is authorized to retrieve the media item108-i. While a given recipient is authorized to view the media item108-i, a corresponding conversation tuple304-imay be associated with a bucket corresponding to the relationship tuple including the (Sender, Recipient) pair. As long as the conversation tuple304-iis provided in the relationship tuple302-i's bucket, the recipient's client may retrieve the media item108-ifrom the server. When the recipient is no longer authorized to view the media item, the conversation tuple304-ihaving the content ID for the content108-imay be removed from the relationship tuple302-i's bucket, thereby removing access to the media item108-ifrom the recipient. The media item108-imay continue to be stored at the server for access by other users that remain able to access the media item. Thus, ephemerality rules may be applied to the conversation tuple to remove access to the media item108-i.
• Textual replies106-imay also be associated with the conversation tuple304-i. According to some embodiments, removing access to the conversation tuple304-imay remove access to the media item108-iand all replies106-ito the media item108-i. In other embodiments, the conversation tuple304-iat the server may be redirected only to the textual replies106-iafter the media item expires (e.g., associating the replies with a different content ID, or flagging the conversation tuple as expired and thus unable to be used to retrieve the content).
• FIG. 4A is a flowchart depicting exemplary logic400 for processing and displaying conversation content. The logic400 may be performed by a system, such as a client system running an application associated with a communications service. Alternatively or in addition, some or all of the logic may be implemented remotely (e.g., at a server associated with the communications service).
• Atblock402, the system may receive an instruction to display a first interface of the communications application. The first interface may correspond to an inbox interface, as depicted for example inFIG. 2A. The instruction may be received, for instance, upon loading the application, or upon receiving a request to navigate to the inbox interface from within the application. In response receiving the instruction, the system may display the inbox interface and begin to propagate the inbox interface with content, such as the above-described account elements.
• To that end, atblock404, the system may identify accounts for which account elements may be displayed. The system may select accounts from an address book or contacts list associated with the user of the application on the communications service. For example, the system may select accounts that have recently (within a predetermined period of time) shared content, or to which content has recently been shared by the current user. Alternatively or in addition, the system may select accounts that are popular with the current user, such as accounts that have been regularly reviewed by the user or from which the user has regularly received shared content (e.g., over a predetermined period of time). In some embodiments, the selected accounts may include accounts that are popular with the user's contacts (e.g., accounts that have generated the most engagement from the user's contacts, such as replies to content or other indications of affinity). Accounts may also be selected for display based on other metrics, as appropriate.
• Atblock406, the system may display account elements in the first interface associated with the accounts selected atblock404. The account elements may include account information for identifying the account to the current user. The account elements may further include information such as a preview of available content, an indicator of how much shared content is available from the account, an indication of when the account last shared content, etc.
• Atblock408, the system may determine, for each account element, whether any active content is associated with the account element. For example, active content may include non-ephemeral content (e.g., permanent content that remains associated with the account until deleted by the sender or the recipient) or ephemeral content that has not yet expired. The system may query a server for a number of available content items from the accounts identified atblock404.
• If the determination atblock408 is “no” (i.e., no active content is associated with a given account element), then atblock410 the system may optionally display a content generation element in association with any account elements for which active content is not available. The content generation element may allow the current user to generate content to be shared with the recipient associated with the account element and/or other users.
• Atblock412, the system may receive a capture instruction, such as a selection of the content generation element. A capture instruction may also be received, e.g., from a menu item in the first interface or from other locations inside or outside the communications application. In response to receiving the capture instruction, atblock414 the system may display a capture interface for capturing content, such as theinterface230 depicted inFIG. 2J. Atblock416, the system may receive an instruction to capture or otherwise generate content through the capture interface. In response, the content may be captured and/or edited.
• Atblock418, the system may present an interface allowing the user to share the content with additional recipients. If the capture interface was entered by selecting a content generation element associated with a particular account element, then the user associated with the account element may be preselected to receive the content (although the user may be permitted to de-select this user). Other users or groups of users may be selectable in the sharing interface.
• Once recipients for the content have been selected, the system may transmit the content to the recipients. For example, the system may forward a copy of the content to a server associated with the communications service, along with a list of intended recipients. The server may fan out the content to the recipients, as applicable. Processing may then return to block402, and the first interface (e.g., the inbox interface) may be displayed.
• Returning to block408, if the determination at this block is “yes” (i.e. active content is associated with a given account element), then atblock420 the system may display a content indicator in proximity to the account element. The content indicator may indicate a number of available content items associated with the account element. For example, the content indicator may be a content amount indicator as previously described.
• Optionally, the system may display a preview of the next available content item from the user associated with the account element. The next available content item may be selected based on ordering metric(s), as discussed in connection withblock424, below. If the next available content item is a permanent content item, then a thumbnail version or portion of the content item may be displayed in the preview. If the next available content item is an ephemeral content item, then the preview may include a distorted (e.g., blurred, pixelated, etc.) version of the content item or other placeholder.
• Atblock422, the system may receive a selection of one of the account elements. For example, the user may select the account element using an input device. If the system includes a touch-based display, the system may register a haptic contact in the area defined by the account element, which may be registered as a selection of the account element.
• Atblock424, the system may select the next active content available from the account associated with the account element selected atblock422. If only one content item is available, then the single available content item may be selected. If multiple content items are available, then the content items may be ordered based on one or more ordering metrics (e.g., most recently generated, popularity, most recently replied-to, most replies, etc.). The content item having the next-highest rank based on the ordering metric(s) may be selected atblock424.
• Atblock426, the system may display a second interface for rendering the content, such as thevisualization interface210 depicted inFIG. 2B. The second interface may include a content display for displaying the content.
• Displaying the second interface may include displaying replies to the content. The replies may be displayed on the content, or in proximity to the content. Alternatively or in addition, the replies may be displayed in a separate interface accessible from the second interface.
• The content in the second interface may be progressively darkened based on the number of replies associated with the content. For example, the content may remain undarkened for a predetermined number of replies (e.g., 0-5 replies). After the predetermined number of replies is reached, the content may be darkened based on the number of replies received over the threshold. An upper threshold (e.g., 10-20 replies) may also be defined, at which point the content may be fully darkened. The content may be darkened according to a defined relationship (e.g., linearly, exponentially, etc.) between the predetermined number of replies and the upper threshold.
• Atblock428, the system may determine whether a reply to the content has been received at the system (e.g., the user may enter a reply in to the reply interface as depicted inFIG. 2C). If the determination atblock428 is “yes” (i.e., a reply has been received), then atblock430 the system may associate the reply with a conversation thread including the content item. For example, the system may flag the reply with metadata including a conversation tuple based on a content ID of the content item.
• If the reply is or includes non-textual content (e.g., an image or video), then optionally the reply may be associated with a new conversation (e.g., the new content may be provided with a newly generated content ID and associated with a conversation tuple based on the new content ID).
• Atblock432, the system may superimpose the reply on the content display in the second interface. Atblock434, the system may optionally darken the content in the content display based on the above-described factors.
• Processing may then proceed to block436. Processing may also proceed to block436 is the determination atblock428 is “no” (i.e., a reply has not been received).
• Atblock436, the system may determine whether to advance the content. For example, if additional content is associated with the selected user account and the system receives an instruction to advance to the next content (or to return to previous content), then the determination atblock436 may be “yes.” In some embodiments, the system may automatically advance to the next content under certain conditions (e.g., the content may be associated with a timer that begins when the second interface is displayed atblock426, and may automatically advance when the timer expires). Alternatively, the system may receive an instruction to exit the second interface without advancing the content (e.g., to return to the first interface), in which case the determination atblock436 may be “no.”
• If the determination atblock436 is “yes,” then processing may return to block424. If the instruction was to advance the content, then the next available content may be retrieved. If the instruction was to return to previously viewed content, then the previous content may be retrieved.
• If the determination atblock436 is “no,” then processing may proceed to block438. Atblock438, the system may process any ephemerality conditions for the content. For example, if the content is associated with an ephemerality condition that defines a number of views allocated to the content before the content expires, then a counter associated with the number of content views may be incremented. If the content is associated with an ephemerality condition that defines an amount of time that the content remains active after initially viewed, then a timer may be started, or the current time may be flagged, or an expiration time may be calculated based on the current time in order to determine when the content will expire. Optionally, if a reply was received atblock428, the ephemerality rules may be suspended or otherwise modified in order to allow the user to continue to view the content as a further conversation takes place in connection with the content item. Upon evaluating the ephemerality conditions, the content may be flagged as inactive, locally or at a remote server, if the conditions indicate that the content is no longer active for the current user. Upon receiving an indication that the content is no longer active, the server may, for example, remove the thread tuple corresponding to the content and the sender/receiver pair from the bucket defined by the relationship tuple corresponding to the sender/receiver pair. Upon exiting the visualization interface, the content may optionally be deleted from the local device if the ephemerality conditions indicate that the content has expired (or as a matter of course, in order to force the system to retrieve the content from a server each time the content is to be viewed, thereby allowing the server to enforce ephemerality). Processing may then return to block402 and the first interface may be displayed.
• Next,exemplary logic450 for representing conversation content in a hierarchical structure is described in connection with the flowchart depicted inFIG. 4B. Thelogic450 may be performed by a system, such as a server associated with a communications service. Some or all of the logic may be implemented remotely, such as at a client device running an application of the communications service.
• Atblock452, the system may receive content from a sending account. The content may be sent with a list of one or more recipients for the content. Atblock454, the content may be stored locally at the system, or remotely in a location accessible to the system.
• Atblock456, the system may determine if additional recipients for the content remain to be processed (e.g., by consulting the list of recipients received atblock452 and determining whether all such recipients have been processed). If the determination atblock456 is “yes,” then processing may proceed to block458.
• Atblock458, the system may select the next recipient in the list to be processed. The system may, atblock460, generate a content identifier for the content item received atblock452, and may generate a thread tuple including the content identifier, the sender, and the currently-processed recipient.
• Atblock462, the system may associate the thread tuple with a relationship tuple including the sender and the currently-processed recipient, if such a tuple already exists. For example, the system may maintain a database or list of conversation buckets defined by the relationship tuples, and the system may consult the database or list to determine if such a relationship tuple already exists. If a relationship tuple does already exist for the sender/user pair, then the thread tuple may be associated with the relationship tuple in the database. If a corresponding relationship tuple does not already exist, then one may be generated.
• Atblock464, the system may optionally associate the thread tuple with ephemerality conditions. The ephemerality conditions may include, for example, a number of views to live, and/or may include an amount of time to live, after which the content will expire. The ephemerality conditions may be determined based on metadata transmitted with the content or based on default conditions. In some embodiments, the received content may be flagged as permanent, in which case the system may not apply ephemerality conditions (the received content may alternatively be flagged as ephemeral in order to have ephemerality conditions applied).
• Atblock466, the system may transmit a preview of the content (e.g. a distorted preview), and/or an indication that content is available, to the currently-processed recipient. Processing may then return to block456 and the system may determine whether additional recipients remain to be processed.
• If the determination atblock456 is “no” (i.e., no more recipients remain to be processed), then processing may proceed to block468. Atblock468, the system may receive a request for the content. For example, the request may be received from one of the recipients identified inblock452 and may request the content based on the content ID.
• Atblock470, the system may process any ephemerality conditions to determine if the request received atblock468 is valid. For example, the request may be invalid if the content is not active for the recipient from whom the request was received. The system may receive an indication that the content is no longer valid from a client at any time. Alternatively or in addition, the system may track ephemerality conditions locally (e.g., starting a timer or incrementing a view counter when the request for the content is received at block468). Upon receiving an indication that the content is no longer active (or determining that the content is no longer active), the server may, for example, remove the thread tuple corresponding to the content and the sender/receiver pair from the bucket defined by the relationship tuple corresponding to the sender/receiver pair.
• Assuming the content remains active and available to the requesting user, atblock472 the system may transmit the content to the requesting user.
• Atblock474, the system may optionally receive a reply to the content. The reply may be associated with the thread tuple defined by the content identifier for the content transmitted atblock472 and the sender/receiver pair associated with the original sender of the content and the recipient participating in the conversation about the content. Atblock478, the reply may be transmitted to the appropriate receiving user. Processing may then terminate.
Communication System Overview
• These examples may be implemented by a service provider system that is provided either locally, at a client device, or remotely (e.g., at a remote server).FIGS. 5A-5C depict various examples of service provider systems, and are discussed in more detail below.
• FIG. 5A depicts an exemplary centralizedservice provider system500, in which functionality for sharing content is integrated into a communications server. Thecentralized system500 may implement some or all of the structure and/or operations of a messaging service in a single computing entity, such as entirely within a single centralizedservice provider device526.
• Thecommunication system500 may include a computer-implemented system having software applications that include one or more components. Although thecommunication system500 shown inFIG. 5A has a limited number of elements in a certain topology, thecommunication system500 may include more or fewer elements in alternate topologies.
• Amessaging service500 may be generally arranged to receive, store, and deliver messages. Themessaging service500 may store messages while messagingclients520, such as may execute on client devices510, are offline and deliver the messages once the messaging clients are available.
• A client device510 may transmit messages addressed to a recipient user, user account, or other identifier resolving to a receiving client device510. In exemplary embodiments, each of the client devices510 and theirrespective messaging clients520 are associated with a particular user or users of themessaging service500. In some embodiments, the client devices510 may be cellular devices such as smartphones and may be identified to themessaging service500 based on a phone number associated with each of the client devices510. In some embodiments, each messaging client may be associated with a user account registered with themessaging service500. In general, each messaging client may be addressed through various techniques for the reception of messages. While in some embodiments the client devices510 may be cellular devices, in other embodiments one or more of the client devices510 may be personal computers, tablet devices, any other form of computing device.
• The client510 may include one or more input devices512 and one ormore output devices518. The input devices512 may include, for example, microphones, keyboards, cameras, electronic pens, touch screens, and other devices for receiving inputs including message data, requests, commands, user interface interactions, selections, and other types of input. Theoutput devices518 may include a speaker, a display device such as a monitor or touch screen, and other devices for presenting an interface to thecommunication system500.
• The client510 may include amemory519, which may be a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, such as one or a combination of a hard drive, solid state drive, flash storage, read only memory, or random access memory. Thememory519 may a representation of aninput514 and/or a representation of anoutput516, as well as one or more applications. For example, thememory519 may store amessaging client520 and/or a social networking client that allows a user to interact with a social networking service.
• Theinput514 may be textual, such as in the case where theinput device212 is a keyboard. Alternatively, theinput514 may be an audio recording, such as in the case where the input device512 is a microphone. Accordingly, theinput514 may be subjected to automatic speech recognition (ASR) logic in order to transform the audio recording to text that is processable by thecommunication system500. The ASR logic may be located at the client device510 (so that the audio recording is processed locally by the client510 and corresponding text is transmitted to the communications server526), or may be located remotely at the service provider server526 (in which case, the audio recording may be transmitted to theservice provider server526 and theservice provider server526 may process the audio into text). Other combinations are also possible—for example, if the input device512 is a touch pad or electronic pen, theinput514 may be in the form of handwriting, which may be subjected to handwriting or optical character recognition analysis logic in order to transform the input512 into processable text.
• The client510 may be provided with anetwork interface522 for communicating with anetwork524, such as the Internet. Thenetwork interface522 may transmit the input512 in a format and/or using a protocol compatible with thenetwork524 and may receive acorresponding output516 from thenetwork524.
• Thenetwork interface522 may communicate through thenetwork524 to acommunications server526. Thecommunications server526 may be operative to coordinate communications between services provided by the service provider.
• Thecommunications server526 may include anetwork interface522,communication preferences528, andcommunication logic530. Thecommunication preferences528 may include one or more privacy settings for one or more users and/or message threads. For example, thecommunication preferences528 may include one or more settings, including default settings, for the logic described herein.
• Thecommunication logic530 may includecontent sharing logic532 that is operable to process, store, and organize content based on the embodiments described herein.
• In some embodiments, messages may be sent peer-to-peer between users without the use of intervening server devices such as may implement thecommunication service500. In these embodiments, thecommunication logic530,content sharing logic532, may reside on the client devices510.
• Thenetwork interface522 of the client510 and/or theservice provider server526 may also be used to communicate through thenetwork524 with asocial networking server536. Thesocial networking server536 may include or may interact with asocial networking graph538 that defines connections in a social network. Furthermore, thecommunications server526 may connect to thesocial networking server536 for various purposes, such as retrieving connection information, messaging history, event details, etc. from the social network.
• A user of the client510 may be an individual (human user), an entity (e.g., an enterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group (e.g., of individuals or entities) that interacts or communicates with or over thesocial networking server536. The social-networking server536 may be a network-addressable computing system hosting an online social network. Thesocial networking server536 may generate, store, receive, and send social-networking data, such as, for example, user-profile data, concept-profile data, social-graph information, or other suitable data related to the online social network. Thesocial networking server536 may be accessed by the other components of the network environment either directly or via thenetwork524.
• Thesocial networking server536 may include an authorization server (or other suitable component(s)) that allows users to opt in to or opt out of having their actions logged by social-networking server536 or shared with other systems (e.g., third-party systems, such as the communication server526), for example, by setting appropriate privacy settings. A privacy setting of a user may determine what information associated with the user may be logged, how information associated with the user may be logged, when information associated with the user may be logged, who may log information associated with the user, whom information associated with the user may be shared with, and for what purposes information associated with the user may be logged or shared. Authorization servers may be used to enforce one or more privacy settings of the users of social-networking server536 through blocking, data hashing, anonymization, or other suitable techniques as appropriate.
• More specifically, one or more of the content objects of the online social network may be associated with a privacy setting. The privacy settings (or “access settings”) for an object may be stored in any suitable manner, such as, for example, in association with the object, in an index on an authorization server, in another suitable manner, or any combination thereof. A privacy setting of an object may specify how the object (or particular information associated with an object) can be accessed (e.g., viewed or shared) using the online social network. Where the privacy settings for an object allow a particular user to access that object, the object may be described as being “visible” with respect to that user. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user of the online social network may specify privacy settings for a user-profile page identify a set of users that may access the work experience information on the user-profile page, thus excluding other users from accessing the information. In particular embodiments, the privacy settings may specify a “blocked list” of users that should not be allowed to access certain information associated with the object. In other words, the blocked list may specify one or more users or entities for which an object is not visible. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may specify a set of users that may not access photos albums associated with the user, thus excluding those users from accessing the photo albums (while also possibly allowing certain users not within the set of users to access the photo albums).
• In particular embodiments, privacy settings may be associated with particular elements of thesocial networking graph538. Privacy settings of a social-graph element, such as a node or an edge, may specify how the social-graph element, information associated with the social-graph element, or content objects associated with the social-graph element can be accessed using the online social network. As an example and not by way of limitation, a particular concept node corresponding to a particular photo may have a privacy setting specifying that the photo may only be accessed by users tagged in the photo and their friends. In particular embodiments, privacy settings may allow users to opt in or opt out of having their actions logged bysocial networking server536 or shared with other systems. In particular embodiments, the privacy settings associated with an object may specify any suitable granularity of permitted access or denial of access. As an example and not by way of limitation, access or denial of access may be specified for particular users (e.g., only me, my roommates, and my boss), users within a particular degrees-of-separation (e.g., friends, or friends-of-friends), user groups (e.g., the gaming club, my family), user networks (e.g., employees of particular employers, students or alumni of particular university), all users (“public”), no users (“private”), users of third-party systems, particular applications (e.g., third-party applications, external websites), other suitable users or entities, or any combination thereof. Although this disclosure describes using particular privacy settings in a particular manner, this disclosure contemplates using any suitable privacy settings in any suitable manner.
• In response to a request from a user (or other entity) for a particular object stored in a data store, thesocial networking server536 may send a request to the data store for the object. The request may identify the user associated with the request. The requested data object may only be sent to the user (or a client system510 of the user) if the authorization server determines that the user is authorized to access the object based on the privacy settings associated with the object. If the requesting user is not authorized to access the object, the authorization server may prevent the requested object from being retrieved from the data store, or may prevent the requested object from be sent to the user. In the search query context, an object may only be generated as a search result if the querying user is authorized to access the object. In other words, the object must have a visibility that is visible to the querying user. If the object has a visibility that is not visible to the user, the object may be excluded from the search results.
• In some embodiments, targeting criteria may be used to identify users of the social network for various purposes. Targeting criteria used to identify and target users may include explicit, stated user interests on social-networking server536 or explicit connections of a user to a node, object, entity, brand, or page onsocial networking server536. In addition or as an alternative, such targeting criteria may include implicit or inferred user interests or connections (which may include analyzing a user's history, demographic, social or other activities, friends' social or other activities, subscriptions, or any of the preceding of other users similar to the user (based, e.g., on shared interests, connections, or events)). Particular embodiments may utilize platform targeting, which may involve platform and “like” impression data; contextual signals (e.g., “Who is viewing now or has viewed recently the page for COCA-COLA?”); light-weight connections (e.g., “check-ins”); connection lookalikes; fans; extracted keywords; EMU advertising; inferential advertising; coefficients, affinities, or other social-graph information; friends-of-friends connections; pinning or boosting; deals; polls; household income, social clusters or groups; products detected in images or other media; social- or open-graph edge types; geo-prediction; views of profile or pages; status updates or other user posts (analysis of which may involve natural-language processing or keyword extraction); events information; or collaborative filtering. Identifying and targeting users may also implicate privacy settings (such as user opt-outs), data hashing, or data anonymization, as appropriate.
• The centralized embodiment depicted inFIG. 5A may be well-suited to deployment as a new system or as an upgrade to an existing system, because thecontent sharing logic532 is incorporated into thecommunications server526. In contrast,FIG. 5B depicts an exemplary distributedcommunication system550, in which functionality for sharing content is distributed and remotely accessible from the communications server. Examples of a distributedsystem550 include a client-server architecture, a 3-tier architecture, an N-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clustered architecture, a peer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture, a shared database architecture, and other types of distributed systems.
• Many of the components depicted inFIG. 5B are identical to those inFIG. 5A, and a description of these elements is not repeated here for the sake of brevity. The primary difference between the centralized embodiment and the distributed embodiment is the addition of a separatecontent sharing server552, which hosts thecontent sharing logic532. Thecontent sharing server552 may be distinct from thecommunications server526 but may communicate with thecommunications server526, either directly or through thenetwork524, to provide the functionality of thecontent sharing logic532 to thecommunications server526.
• The embodiment depicted inFIG. 5B may be particularly well suited to allow exemplary embodiments to be deployed alongside existing messaging systems, for example when it is difficult or undesirable to replace an existing messaging server. Additionally, in some cases thecommunications server526 may have limited resources (e.g. processing or memory resources) that limit or preclude the addition of the additional pivot functionality. In such situations, the capabilities described herein may still be provided through the separatecontent sharing server552.
• FIG. 5C illustrates an example of asocial networking graph538. In exemplary embodiments, a social networking service may store one or moresocial graphs538 in one or more data stores as a social graph data structure via the social networking service.
• Thesocial graph538 may include multiple nodes, such asuser nodes554 andconcept nodes556. Thesocial graph228 may furthermore includeedges558 connecting the nodes. The nodes and edges ofsocial graph228 may be stored as data objects, for example, in a data store (such as a social-graph database). Such a data store may include one or more searchable or queryable indexes of nodes or edges ofsocial graph228.
• Thesocial graph538 may be accessed by a social-networking server226,client system210, third-party system (e.g., the translation server224), or any other approved system or device for suitable applications.
• Auser node554 may correspond to a user of the social-networking system. A user may be an individual (human user), an entity (e.g., an enterprise, business, or third-party application), or a group (e.g., of individuals or entities) that interacts or communicates with or over the social-networking system. In exemplary embodiments, when a user registers for an account with the social-networking system, the social-networking system may create auser node554 corresponding to the user, and store the user node30 in one or more data stores. Users anduser nodes554 described herein may, where appropriate, refer to registered users anduser nodes554 associated with registered users. In addition or as an alternative, users anduser nodes554 described herein may, where appropriate, refer to users that have not registered with the social-networking system. In particular embodiments, auser node554 may be associated with information provided by a user or information gathered by various systems, including the social-networking system. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user may provide their name, profile picture, contact information, birth date, sex, marital status, family status, employment, education background, preferences, interests, or other demographic information. In particular embodiments, auser node554 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding to information associated with a user. In particular embodiments, auser node554 may correspond to one or more webpages. Auser node554 may be associated with a unique user identifier for the user in the social-networking system.
• In particular embodiments, aconcept node556 may correspond to a concept. As an example and not by way of limitation, a concept may correspond to a place (such as, for example, a movie theater, restaurant, landmark, or city); a website (such as, for example, a website associated with the social-network service or a third-party website associated with a web-application server); an entity (such as, for example, a person, business, group, sports team, or celebrity); a resource (such as, for example, an audio file, video file, digital photo, text file, structured document, or application) which may be located within the social-networking system or on an external server, such as a web-application server; real or intellectual property (such as, for example, a sculpture, painting, movie, game, song, idea, photograph, or written work); a game; an activity; an idea or theory; another suitable concept; or two or more such concepts. Aconcept node556 may be associated with information of a concept provided by a user or information gathered by various systems, including the social-networking system. As an example and not by way of limitation, information of a concept may include a name or a title; one or more images (e.g., an image of the cover page of a book); a location (e.g., an address or a geographical location); a website (which may be associated with a URL); contact information (e.g., a phone number or an email address); other suitable concept information; or any suitable combination of such information. In particular embodiments, aconcept node556 may be associated with one or more data objects corresponding to information associated withconcept node556. In particular embodiments, aconcept node556 may correspond to one or more webpages.
• In particular embodiments, a node insocial graph538 may represent or be represented by a webpage (which may be referred to as a “profile page”). Profile pages may be hosted by or accessible to the social-networking system. Profile pages may also be hosted on third-party websites associated with a third-party server. As an example and not by way of limitation, a profile page corresponding to a particular external webpage may be the particular external webpage and the profile page may correspond to aparticular concept node556. Profile pages may be viewable by all or a selected subset of other users. As an example and not by way of limitation, auser node554 may have a corresponding user-profile page in which the corresponding user may add content, make declarations, or otherwise express himself or herself. A business page such as business page205 may comprise a user-profile page for a commerce entity. As another example and not by way of limitation, aconcept node556 may have a corresponding concept-profile page in which one or more users may add content, make declarations, or express themselves, particularly in relation to the concept corresponding toconcept node556.
• In particular embodiments, aconcept node556 may represent a third-party webpage or resource hosted by a third-party system. The third-party webpage or resource may include, among other elements, content, a selectable or other icon, or other inter-actable object (which may be implemented, for example, in JavaScript, AJAX, or PHP codes) representing an action or activity. As an example and not by way of limitation, a third-party webpage may include a selectable icon such as “like,” “check in,” “eat,” “recommend,” or another suitable action or activity. A user viewing the third-party webpage may perform an action by selecting one of the icons (e.g., “eat”), causing a client system to send to the social-networking system a message indicating the user's action. In response to the message, the social-networking system may create an edge (e.g., an “eat” edge) between auser node554 corresponding to the user and aconcept node556 corresponding to the third-party webpage or resource andstore edge558 in one or more data stores.
• In particular embodiments, a pair of nodes insocial graph538 may be connected to each other by one ormore edges558. Anedge558 connecting a pair of nodes may represent a relationship between the pair of nodes. In particular embodiments, anedge558 may include or represent one or more data objects or attributes corresponding to the relationship between a pair of nodes. As an example and not by way of limitation, a first user may indicate that a second user is a “friend” of the first user. In response to this indication, the social-networking system may send a “friend request” to the second user. If the second user confirms the “friend request,” the social-networking system may create anedge558 connecting the first user'suser node554 to the second user'suser node554 insocial graph538 andstore edge558 as social-graph information in one or more data stores. In the example ofFIG. 5C,social graph538 includes anedge558 indicating a friend relation betweenuser nodes554 of user “Amanda” and user “Dorothy.” Although this disclosure describes or illustratesparticular edges558 with particular attributes connectingparticular user nodes554, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges558 with any suitable attributes connectinguser nodes554. As an example and not by way of limitation, anedge558 may represent a friendship, family relationship, business or employment relationship, fan relationship, follower relationship, visitor relationship, subscriber relationship, superior/subordinate relationship, reciprocal relationship, non-reciprocal relationship, another suitable type of relationship, or two or more such relationships. Moreover, although this disclosure generally describes nodes as being connected, this disclosure also describes users or concepts as being connected. Herein, references to users or concepts being connected may, where appropriate, refer to the nodes corresponding to those users or concepts being connected insocial graph538 by one ormore edges558.
• In particular embodiments, anedge558 between auser node554 and aconcept node556 may represent a particular action or activity performed by a user associated withuser node554 toward a concept associated with aconcept node556. As an example and not by way of limitation, as illustrated inFIG. 5C, a user may “like,” “attended,” “played,” “listened,” “cooked,” “worked at,” or “watched” a concept, each of which may correspond to a edge type or subtype. A concept-profile page corresponding to aconcept node556 may include, for example, a selectable “check in” icon (such as, for example, a clickable “check in” icon) or a selectable “add to favorites” icon. Similarly, after a user clicks these icons, the social-networking system may create a “favorite” edge or a “check in” edge in response to a user's action corresponding to a respective action. As another example and not by way of limitation, a user (user “Carla”) may listen to a particular song (“Across the Sea”) using a particular application (SPOTIFY, which is an online music application). In this case, the social-networking system may create a “listened”edge558 and a “used” edge (as illustrated inFIG. 5C) betweenuser nodes554 corresponding to the user andconcept nodes556 corresponding to the song and application to indicate that the user listened to the song and used the application. Moreover, the social-networking system may create a “played” edge558 (as illustrated inFIG. 5C) betweenconcept nodes556 corresponding to the song and the application to indicate that the particular song was played by the particular application. In this case, “played”edge558 corresponds to an action performed by an external application (SPOTIFY) on an external audio file (the song “Across the Sea”). Although this disclosure describesparticular edges558 with particular attributes connectinguser nodes554 andconcept nodes556, this disclosure contemplates anysuitable edges558 with any suitable attributes connectinguser nodes554 andconcept nodes556. Moreover, although this disclosure describes edges between auser node554 and aconcept node556 representing a single relationship, this disclosure contemplates edges between auser node554 and aconcept node556 representing one or more relationships. As an example and not by way of limitation, anedge558 may represent both that a user likes and has used at a particular concept. Alternatively, anotheredge558 may represent each type of relationship (or multiples of a single relationship) between auser node554 and a concept node556 (as illustrated inFIG. 5C betweenuser node554 for user “Edwin” andconcept node556 for “SPOTIFY”).
• In particular embodiments, the social-networking system may create anedge558 between auser node554 and aconcept node556 insocial graph538. As an example and not by way of limitation, a user viewing a concept-profile page (such as, for example, by using a web browser or a special-purpose application hosted by the user's client system) may indicate that he or she likes the concept represented by theconcept node556 by clicking or selecting a “Like” icon, which may cause the user's client system to send to the social-networking system a message indicating the user's liking of the concept associated with the concept-profile page. In response to the message, the social-networking system may create anedge558 betweenuser node554 associated with the user andconcept node556, as illustrated by “like”edge558 between the user andconcept node556. In particular embodiments, the social-networking system may store anedge558 in one or more data stores. In particular embodiments, anedge558 may be automatically formed by the social-networking system in response to a particular user action. As an example and not by way of limitation, if a first user uploads a picture, watches a movie, or listens to a song, anedge558 may be formed betweenuser node554 corresponding to the first user andconcept nodes556 corresponding to those concepts. Although this disclosure describes formingparticular edges558 in particular manners, this disclosure contemplates forming anysuitable edges558 in any suitable manner.
• Thesocial graph538 may further comprise a plurality of product nodes. Product nodes may represent particular products that may be associated with a particular business. A business may provide a product catalog to a consumer-to-business service and the consumer-to-business service may therefore represent each of the products within the product in thesocial graph538 with each product being in a distinct product node. A product node may comprise information relating to the product, such as pricing information, descriptive information, manufacturer information, availability information, and other relevant information. For example, each of the items on a menu for a restaurant may be represented within thesocial graph538 with a product node describing each of the items. A product node may be linked by an edge to the business providing the product. Where multiple businesses provide a product, each business may have a distinct product node associated with its providing of the product or may each link to the same product node. A product node may be linked by an edge to each user that has purchased, rated, owns, recommended, or viewed the product, with the edge describing the nature of the relationship (e.g., purchased, rated, owns, recommended, viewed, or other relationship). Each of the product nodes may be associated with a graph id and an associated merchant id by virtue of the linked merchant business. Products available from a business may therefore be communicated to a user by retrieving the available product nodes linked to the user node for the business within thesocial graph538. The information for a product node may be manipulated by the social-networking system as a product object that encapsulates information regarding the referenced product.
• As such, thesocial graph538 may be used to infer shared interests, shared experiences, or other shared or common attributes of two or more users of a social-networking system. For instance, two or more users each having an edge to a common business, product, media item, institution, or other entity represented in thesocial graph538 may indicate a shared relationship with that entity, which may be used to suggest customization of a use of a social-networking system, including a messaging system, for one or more users.
• The embodiments described above may be performed by a messaging architecture, an example of which is next described with reference toFIG. 6.
Messaging Architecture
• FIG. 6 illustrates an embodiment of a plurality of servers implementing various functions of amessaging service600. It will be appreciated that different distributions of work and functions may be used in various embodiments of amessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise a domain namefront end602. The domain namefront end602 may be assigned one or more domain names associated with themessaging service600 in a domain name system (DNS). The domain namefront end602 may receive incoming connections and distribute the connections to servers providing various messaging services.
• Themessaging service602 may comprise one ormore chat servers604. Thechat servers604 may comprise front-end servers for receiving and transmitting user-to-user messaging updates such as chat messages. Incoming connections may be assigned to thechat servers604 by the domain namefront end602 based on workload balancing.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise backend servers608. The backend servers608 may perform specialized tasks in the support of the chat operations of the front-end chat servers604. A plurality of different types of backend servers608 may be used. It will be appreciated that the assignment of types of tasks to different backend serves608 may vary in different embodiments. In some embodiments some of the back-end services provided by dedicated servers may be combined onto a single server or a set of servers each performing multiple tasks divided between different servers in the embodiment described herein. Similarly, in some embodiments tasks of some of dedicated back-end servers described herein may be divided between different servers of different server groups.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or moreoffline storage servers610. The one or moreoffline storage servers610 may store messaging content for currently-offline messaging clients in hold for when the messaging clients reconnect.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore sessions servers612. The one ormore session servers612 may maintain session state of connected messaging clients.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore presence servers614. The one ormore presence servers614 may maintain presence information for themessaging service600. Presence information may correspond to user-specific information indicating whether or not a given user has an online messaging client and is available for chatting, has an online messaging client but is currently away from it, does not have an online messaging client, and any other presence state.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or morepush storage servers616. The one or morepush storage servers616 may cache push requests and transmit the push requests to messaging clients. Push requests may be used to wake messaging clients, to notify messaging clients that a messaging update is available, and to otherwise perform server-side-driven interactions with messaging clients.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore group servers618. The one ormore group servers618 may maintain lists of groups, add users to groups, remove users from groups, and perform the reception, caching, and forwarding of group chat messages.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or moreblock list servers620. The one or moreblock list servers620 may maintain user-specific block lists, the user-specific incoming-block lists indicating for each user the one or more other users that are forbidden from transmitting messages to that user. Alternatively or additionally, the one or moreblock list servers620 may maintain user-specific outgoing-block lists indicating for each user the one or more other users that that user is forbidden from transmitting messages to. It will be appreciated that incoming-block lists and outgoing-block lists may be stored in combination in, for example, a database, with the incoming-block lists and outgoing-block lists representing different views of a same repository of block information.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or more last seeninformation servers622. The one or more last seeninformation servers622 may receive, store, and maintain information indicating the last seen location, status, messaging client, and other elements of a user's last seen connection to themessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or morekey servers624. The one or more key servers may host public keys for public/private key encrypted communication.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or moreprofile photo servers626. The one or moreprofile photo servers626 may store and make available for retrieval profile photos for the plurality of users of themessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or morespam logging servers628. The one or morespam logging servers628 may log known and suspected spam (e.g., unwanted messages, particularly those of a promotional nature). The one or morespam logging servers628 may be operative to analyze messages to determine whether they are spam and to perform punitive measures, in some embodiments, against suspected spammers (users that send spam messages).
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore statistics servers630. The one or more statistics servers may compile and store statistics information related to the operation of themessaging service600 and the behavior of the users of themessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore web servers632. The one ormore web servers632 may engage in hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) and hypertext transport protocol secure (HTTPS) connections with web browsers.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or more chatactivity monitoring servers634. The one or more chatactivity monitoring servers634 may monitor the chats of users to determine unauthorized or discouraged behavior by the users of themessaging service600. The one or more chatactivity monitoring servers634 may work in cooperation with thespam logging servers628 andblock list servers620, with the one or more chatactivity monitoring servers634 identifying spam or other discouraged behavior and providing spam information to thespam logging servers628 and blocking information, where appropriate to theblock list servers620.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore sync servers636. The one ormore sync servers636 may sync thecommunication system500 with contact information from a messaging client, such as an address book on a mobile phone, to determine contacts for a user in themessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore multimedia servers638. The one or more multimedia servers may store multimedia (e.g., images, video, audio) in transit between messaging clients, multimedia cached for offline endpoints, and may perform transcoding of multimedia.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore payment servers640. The one ormore payment servers640 may process payments from users. The one ormore payment servers640 may connect to external third-party servers for the performance of payments.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one ormore registration servers642. The one ormore registration servers642 may register new users of themessaging service600.
• Themessaging service600 may comprise one or morevoice relay servers644. The one or morevoice relay servers644 may relay voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) voice communication between messaging clients for the performance of VoIP calls.
• The above-described methods may be embodied as instructions on a computer readable medium or as part of a computing architecture.FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment of anexemplary computing architecture700 suitable for implementing various embodiments as previously described. In one embodiment, thecomputing architecture700 may comprise or be implemented as part of an electronic device, such as acomputer701. The embodiments are not limited in this context.
• As used in this application, the terms “system” and “component” are intended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, a combination of hardware and software, software, or software in execution, examples of which are provided by theexemplary computing architecture700. For example, a component can be, but is not limited to being, a process running on a processor, a processor, a hard disk drive, multiple storage drives (of optical and/or magnetic storage medium), an object, an executable, a thread of execution, a program, and/or a computer. By way of illustration, both an application running on a server and the server can be a component. One or more components can reside within a process and/or thread of execution, and a component can be localized on one computer and/or distributed between two or more computers. Further, components may be communicatively coupled to each other by various types of communications media to coordinate operations. The coordination may involve the uni-directional or bi-directional exchange of information. For instance, the components may communicate information in the form of signals communicated over the communications media. The information can be implemented as signals allocated to various signal lines. In such allocations, each message is a signal. Further embodiments, however, may alternatively employ data messages. Such data messages may be sent across various connections. Exemplary connections include parallel interfaces, serial interfaces, and bus interfaces.
• Thecomputing architecture700 includes various common computing elements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors, co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals, interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards, multimedia input/output (I/O) components, power supplies, and so forth. The embodiments, however, are not limited to implementation by thecomputing architecture700.
• As shown inFIG. 7, thecomputing architecture700 comprises aprocessing unit702, asystem memory704 and asystem bus706. Theprocessing unit702 can be any of various commercially available processors, including without limitation an AMD® Athlon®, Duron® and Opteron® processors; ARM® application, embedded and secure processors; IBM® and Motorola® DragonBall® and PowerPC® processors; IBM and Sony® Cell processors; Intel® Celeron®, Core (2) Duo®, Itanium®, Pentium®, Xeon®, and XScale® processors; and similar processors. Dual microprocessors, multi-core processors, and other multi-processor architectures may also be employed as theprocessing unit702.
• Thesystem bus706 provides an interface for system components including, but not limited to, thesystem memory704 to theprocessing unit702. Thesystem bus706 can be any of several types of bus structure that may further interconnect to a memory bus (with or without a memory controller), a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of commercially available bus architectures. Interface adapters may connect to thesystem bus706 via a slot architecture. Example slot architectures may include without limitation Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), Card Bus, (Extended) Industry Standard Architecture ((E)ISA), Micro Channel Architecture (MCA), NuBus, Peripheral Component Interconnect (Extended) (PCI(X)), PCI Express, Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA), and the like.
• Thecomputing architecture700 may comprise or implement various articles of manufacture. An article of manufacture may comprise a computer-readable storage medium to store logic. Examples of a computer-readable storage medium may include any tangible media capable of storing electronic data, including volatile memory or non-volatile memory, removable or non-removable memory, erasable or non-erasable memory, writeable or re-writeable memory, and so forth. Examples of logic may include executable computer program instructions implemented using any suitable type of code, such as source code, compiled code, interpreted code, executable code, static code, dynamic code, object-oriented code, visual code, and the like. Embodiments may also be at least partly implemented as instructions contained in or on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, which may be read and executed by one or more processors to enable performance of the operations described herein.
• Thesystem memory704 may include various types of computer-readable storage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, such as read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), static RAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymer memory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase change or ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices (e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type of storage media suitable for storing information. In the illustrated embodiment shown inFIG. 7, thesystem memory704 can includenon-volatile memory708 and/orvolatile memory710. A basic input/output system (BIOS) can be stored in thenon-volatile memory708.
• Thecomputing architecture700 may include various types of computer-readable storage media in the form of one or more lower speed memory units, including an internal (or external) hard disk drive (HDD)712, a magnetic floppy disk drive (FDD)714 to read from or write to a removablemagnetic disk716, and anoptical disk drive718 to read from or write to a removable optical disk720 (e.g., a CD-ROM or DVD). TheHDD712,FDD714 andoptical disk drive720 can be connected to thesystem bus706 by anHDD interface722, anFDD interface724 and anoptical drive interface726, respectively. TheHDD interface722 for external drive implementations can include at least one or both of Universal Serial Bus (USB) and IEEE 694 interface technologies.
• The drives and associated computer-readable media provide volatile and/or nonvolatile storage of data, data structures, computer-executable instructions, and so forth. For example, a number of program modules can be stored in the drives andmemory units708,712, including anoperating system728, one ormore application programs730,other program modules732, andprogram data734. In one embodiment, the one ormore application programs730,other program modules732, andprogram data734 can include, for example, the various applications and/or components of thecommunication system500.
• A user can enter commands and information into thecomputer701 through one or more wire/wireless input devices, for example, akeyboard736 and a pointing device, such as amouse738. Other input devices may include microphones, infra-red (IR) remote controls, radio-frequency (RF) remote controls, game pads, stylus pens, card readers, dongles, finger print readers, gloves, graphics tablets, joysticks, keyboards, retina readers, touch screens (e.g., capacitive, resistive, etc.), trackballs, trackpads, sensors, styluses, and the like. These and other input devices are often connected to theprocessing unit702 through aninput device interface740 that is coupled to thesystem bus706, but can be connected by other interfaces such as a parallel port, IEEE 694 serial port, a game port, a USB port, an IR interface, and so forth.
• Amonitor742 or other type of display device is also connected to thesystem bus706 via an interface, such as avideo adaptor744. Themonitor742 may be internal or external to thecomputer701. In addition to themonitor742, a computer typically includes other peripheral output devices, such as speakers, printers, and so forth.
• Thecomputer701 may operate in a networked environment using logical connections via wire and/or wireless communications to one or more remote computers, such as aremote computer744. Theremote computer744 can be a workstation, a server computer, a router, a personal computer, portable computer, microprocessor-based entertainment appliance, a peer device or other common network node, and typically includes many or all of the elements described relative to thecomputer701, although, for purposes of brevity, only a memory/storage device746 is illustrated. The logical connections depicted include wire/wireless connectivity to a local area network (LAN)748 and/or larger networks, for example, a wide area network (WAN)750. Such LAN and WAN networking environments are commonplace in offices and companies, and facilitate enterprise-wide computer networks, such as intranets, all of which may connect to a global communications network, for example, the Internet.
• When used in a LAN networking environment, thecomputer701 is connected to theLAN748 through a wire and/or wireless communication network interface oradaptor752. Theadaptor752 can facilitate wire and/or wireless communications to theLAN748, which may also include a wireless access point disposed thereon for communicating with the wireless functionality of theadaptor752.
• When used in a WAN networking environment, thecomputer701 can include amodem754, or is connected to a communications server on theWAN750, or has other means for establishing communications over theWAN750, such as by way of the Internet. Themodem754, which can be internal or external and a wire and/or wireless device, connects to thesystem bus706 via theinput device interface740. In a networked environment, program modules depicted relative to thecomputer701, or portions thereof, can be stored in the remote memory/storage device746. It will be appreciated that the network connections shown are exemplary and other means of establishing a communications link between the computers can be used.
• Thecomputer701 is operable to communicate with wire and wireless devices or entities using theIEEE 802 family of standards, such as wireless devices operatively disposed in wireless communication (e.g., IEEE 802.13 over-the-air modulation techniques). This includes at least Wi-Fi (or Wireless Fidelity), WiMax, and Bluetooth™ wireless technologies, among others. Thus, the communication can be a predefined structure as with a conventional network or simply an ad hoc communication between at least two devices. Wi-Fi networks use radio technologies called IEEE 802.13x (a, b, g, n, etc.) to provide secure, reliable, fast wireless connectivity. A Wi-Fi network can be used to connect computers to each other, to the Internet, and to wire networks (which use IEEE 802.3-related media and functions).
• FIG. 8 is a block diagram depicting anexemplary communications architecture800 suitable for implementing various embodiments as previously described. Thecommunications architecture800 includes various common communications elements, such as a transmitter, receiver, transceiver, radio, network interface, baseband processor, antenna, amplifiers, filters, power supplies, and so forth. The embodiments, however, are not limited to implementation by thecommunications architecture800.
• As shown inFIG. 8, thecommunications architecture800 includes one ormore clients802 andservers804. Theclients802 may implement the client device510. Theservers804 may implement theserver device526. Theclients802 and theservers804 are operatively connected to one or more respectiveclient data stores806 andserver data stores808 that can be employed to store information local to therespective clients802 andservers804, such as cookies and/or associated contextual information.
• Theclients802 and theservers804 may communicate information between each other using acommunication framework810. Thecommunications framework810 may implement any well-known communications techniques and protocols. Thecommunications framework810 may be implemented as a packet-switched network (e.g., public networks such as the Internet, private networks such as an enterprise intranet, and so forth), a circuit-switched network (e.g., the public switched telephone network), or a combination of a packet-switched network and a circuit-switched network (with suitable gateways and translators).
• Thecommunications framework810 may implement various network interfaces arranged to accept, communicate, and connect to a communications network. A network interface may be regarded as a specialized form of an input output interface. Network interfaces may employ connection protocols including without limitation direct connect, Ethernet (e.g., thick, thin, twisted pair 10/100/1000 Base T, and the like), token ring, wireless network interfaces, cellular network interfaces, IEEE 802.8a-x network interfaces, IEEE 802.16 network interfaces, IEEE 802.20 network interfaces, and the like. Further, multiple network interfaces may be used to engage with various communications network types. For example, multiple network interfaces may be employed to allow for the communication over broadcast, multicast, and unicast networks. Should processing requirements dictate a greater amount speed and capacity, distributed network controller architectures may similarly be employed to pool, load balance, and otherwise increase the communicative bandwidth required byclients802 and theservers804. A communications network may be any one and the combination of wired and/or wireless networks including without limitation a direct interconnection, a secured custom connection, a private network (e.g., an enterprise intranet), a public network (e.g., the Internet), a Personal Area Network (PAN), a Local Area Network (LAN), a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), an Operating Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI), a Wide Area Network (WAN), a wireless network, a cellular network, and other communications networks.
• FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of adevice900 for use in a multicarrier OFDM system, such as thecommunication system500. Thedevice900 may implement, for example,software components902 as described with reference to themessaging component logic600, theintent determination logic700, and thegroup selection logic800. Thedevice900 may also implement alogic circuit904. Thelogic circuit904 may include physical circuits to perform operations described for themessaging system600. As shown inFIG. 9,device900 may include aradio interface906,baseband circuitry908, and acomputing platform910, although embodiments are not limited to this configuration.
• Thedevice900 may implement some or all of the structure and/or operations for thecommunication system500 and/orlogic circuit904 in a single computing entity, such as entirely within a single device. Alternatively, thedevice900 may distribute portions of the structure and/or operations for themessaging system600 and/orlogic circuit904 across multiple computing entities using a distributed system architecture, such as a client-server architecture, a 3-tier architecture, an N-tier architecture, a tightly-coupled or clustered architecture, a peer-to-peer architecture, a master-slave architecture, a shared database architecture, and other types of distributed systems. The embodiments are not limited in this context.
• In one embodiment, theradio interface906 may include a component or combination of components adapted for transmitting and/or receiving single carrier or multi-carrier modulated signals (e.g., including complementary code keying (CCK) and/or orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols) although the embodiments are not limited to any specific over-the-air interface or modulation scheme. Theradio interface906 may include, for example, areceiver912, atransmitter914 and/or afrequency synthesizer916. Theradio interface906 may include bias controls, a crystal oscillator and/or one ormore antennas918. In another embodiment, theradio interface906 may use external voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), surface acoustic wave filters, intermediate frequency (IF) filters and/or RF filters, as desired. Due to the variety of potential RF interface designs an expansive description thereof is omitted.
• Thebaseband circuitry908 may communicate with theradio interface906 to process receive and/or transmit signals and may include, for example, an analog-to-digital converter920 for down converting received signals, and a digital-to-analog converter922 for up-converting signals for transmission. Further, thebaseband circuitry908 may include a baseband or physical layer (PHY)processing circuit924 for PHY link layer processing of respective receive/transmit signals. Thebaseband circuitry908 may include, for example, aprocessing circuit926 for medium access control (MAC)/data link layer processing. Thebaseband circuitry908 may include amemory controller928 for communicating with theprocessing circuit926 and/or acomputing platform910, for example, via one ormore interfaces930.
• In some embodiments, thePHY processing circuit924 may include a frame construction and/or detection module, in combination with additional circuitry such as a buffer memory, to construct and/or deconstruct communication frames, such as radio frames. Alternatively or in addition, theMAC processing circuit926 may share processing for certain of these functions or perform these processes independent of thePHY processing circuit924. In some embodiments, MAC and PHY processing may be integrated into a single circuit.
• Thecomputing platform910 may provide computing functionality for thedevice900. As shown, thecomputing platform910 may include aprocessing component932. In addition to, or alternatively of, thebaseband circuitry908, thedevice900 may execute processing operations or logic for thecommunication system500 andlogic circuit904 using theprocessing component932. The processing component932 (and/or thePHY924 and/or MAC926) may comprise various hardware elements, software elements, or a combination of both. Examples of hardware elements may include devices, logic devices, components, processors, microprocessors, circuits, processor circuits, circuit elements (e.g., transistors, resistors, capacitors, inductors, and so forth), integrated circuits, application specific integrated circuits (ASIC), programmable logic devices (PLD), digital signal processors (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA), memory units, logic gates, registers, semiconductor device, chips, microchips, chip sets, and so forth. Examples of software elements may include software components, programs, applications, computer programs, application programs, system programs, software development programs, machine programs, operating system software, middleware, firmware, software modules, routines, subroutines, functions, methods, procedures, software interfaces, application program interfaces (API), instruction sets, computing code, computer code, code segments, computer code segments, words, values, symbols, or any combination thereof. Determining whether an embodiment is implemented using hardware elements and/or software elements may vary in accordance with any number of factors, such as desired computational rate, power levels, heat tolerances, processing cycle budget, input data rates, output data rates, memory resources, data bus speeds and other design or performance constraints, as desired for a given implementation.
• Thecomputing platform910 may further includeother platform components934.Other platform components934 include common computing elements, such as one or more processors, multi-core processors, co-processors, memory units, chipsets, controllers, peripherals, interfaces, oscillators, timing devices, video cards, audio cards, multimedia input/output (I/O) components (e.g., digital displays), power supplies, and so forth. Examples of memory units may include without limitation various types of computer readable and machine readable storage media in the form of one or more higher speed memory units, such as read-only memory (ROM), random-access memory (RAM), dynamic RAM (DRAM), Double-Data-Rate DRAM (DDRAM), synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), static RAM (SRAM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), flash memory, polymer memory such as ferroelectric polymer memory, ovonic memory, phase change or ferroelectric memory, silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) memory, magnetic or optical cards, an array of devices such as Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) drives, solid state memory devices (e.g., USB memory, solid state drives (SSD) and any other type of storage media suitable for storing information.
• Thedevice900 may be, for example, an ultra-mobile device, a mobile device, a fixed device, a machine-to-machine (M2M) device, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a mobile computing device, a smart phone, a telephone, a digital telephone, a cellular telephone, user equipment, eBook readers, a handset, a one-way pager, a two-way pager, a messaging device, a computer, a personal computer (PC), a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a notebook computer, a netbook computer, a handheld computer, a tablet computer, a server, a server array or server farm, a web server, a network server, an Internet server, a work station, a mini-computer, a main frame computer, a supercomputer, a network appliance, a web appliance, a distributed computing system, multiprocessor systems, processor-based systems, consumer electronics, programmable consumer electronics, game devices, television, digital television, set top box, wireless access point, base station, node B, evolved node B (eNB), subscriber station, mobile subscriber center, radio network controller, router, hub, gateway, bridge, switch, machine, or combination thereof. Accordingly, functions and/or specific configurations of thedevice900 described herein, may be included or omitted in various embodiments of thedevice900, as suitably desired. In some embodiments, thedevice900 may be configured to be compatible with protocols and frequencies associated one or more of the 3GPP LTE Specifications and/or IEEE 1402.16 Standards for WMANs, and/or other broadband wireless networks, cited herein, although the embodiments are not limited in this respect.
• Embodiments ofdevice900 may be implemented using single input single output (SISO) architectures. However, certain implementations may include multiple antennas (e.g., antennas918) for transmission and/or reception using adaptive antenna techniques for beamforming or spatial division multiple access (SDMA) and/or using MIMO communication techniques.
• The components and features of thedevice900 may be implemented using any combination of discrete circuitry, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), logic gates and/or single chip architectures. Further, the features of thedevice900 may be implemented using microcontrollers, programmable logic arrays and/or microprocessors or any combination of the foregoing where suitably appropriate. It is noted that hardware, firmware and/or software elements may be collectively or individually referred to herein as “logic” or “circuit.”
• It will be appreciated that theexemplary device900 shown in the block diagram ofFIG. 9 may represent one functionally descriptive example of many potential implementations. Accordingly, division, omission or inclusion of block functions depicted in the accompanying figures does not infer that the hardware components, circuits, software and/or elements for implementing these functions would be necessarily be divided, omitted, or included in embodiments.
• At least one computer-readable storage medium936 may include instructions that, when executed, cause a system to perform any of the computer-implemented methods described herein.
GENERAL NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY
• Some embodiments may be described using the expression “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” along with their derivatives. These terms mean that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment. Moreover, unless otherwise noted the features described above are recognized to be usable together in any combination. Thus, any features discussed separately may be employed in combination with each other unless it is noted that the features are incompatible with each other.
• With general reference to notations and nomenclature used herein, the detailed descriptions herein may be presented in terms of program procedures executed on a computer or network of computers. These procedural descriptions and representations are used by those skilled in the art to most effectively convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art.
• A procedure is here, and generally, conceived to be a self-consistent sequence of operations leading to a desired result. These operations are those requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical, magnetic or optical signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated. It proves convenient at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, or the like. It should be noted, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels applied to those quantities.
• Further, the manipulations performed are often referred to in terms, such as adding or comparing, which are commonly associated with mental operations performed by a human operator. No such capability of a human operator is necessary, or desirable in most cases, in any of the operations described herein, which form part of one or more embodiments. Rather, the operations are machine operations. Useful machines for performing operations of various embodiments include general purpose digital computers or similar devices.
• Some embodiments may be described using the expression “coupled” and “connected” along with their derivatives. These terms are not necessarily intended as synonyms for each other. For example, some embodiments may be described using the terms “connected” and/or “coupled” to indicate that two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contact with each other. The term “coupled,” however, may also mean that two or more elements are not in direct contact with each other, but yet still co-operate or interact with each other.
• Various embodiments also relate to apparatus or systems for performing these operations. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purpose or it may comprise a general purpose computer as selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. The procedures presented herein are not inherently related to a particular computer or other apparatus. Various general purpose machines may be used with programs written in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct more specialized apparatus to perform the required method steps. The required structure for a variety of these machines will appear from the description given.
• It is emphasized that the Abstract of the Disclosure is provided to allow a reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technical disclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. In addition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, it can be seen that various features are grouped together in a single embodiment for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed embodiments require more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matter lies in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thus the following claims are hereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate embodiment. In the appended claims, the terms “including” and “in which” are used as the plain-English equivalents of the respective terms “comprising” and “wherein,” respectively. Moreover, the terms “first,” “second,” “third,” and so forth, are used merely as labels, and are not intended to impose numerical requirements on their objects.
• What has been described above includes examples of the disclosed architecture. It is, of course, not possible to describe every conceivable combination of components and/or methodologies, but one of ordinary skill in the art may recognize that many further combinations and permutations are possible. Accordingly, the novel architecture is intended to embrace all such alterations, modifications and variations that fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

Claims (20)

1. A method, comprising:

displaying, on a display, a first interface for a messaging inbox associated with a receiving user, the first interface displaying a selectable account element associated with a conversation involving the receiving user and a sending user;

receiving a selection of the selectable account element;

in direct response to receiving the selection of the selectable account element, replacing the first interface with a second interface configured to display a media item comprising an image or a video received from the sending user, wherein the second interface is configured to display the media item in a manner such that the media item substantially fills at least one of the dimensions of the display;

receiving a textual message responding to the media item;

transmitting the textual message to the sending user; and

displaying the textual message in a text display area in the second interface.

2. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the text area is superimposed on the media item.

3. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising:

receiving a second textual message from the sending user; and

superimposing the second textual message on the media item as a response to the textual message.

4. The method ofclaim 3, further comprising progressively dimming, blurring, or darkening the media item in response to each new textual message.

5. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising:

receiving a navigation gesture in the second interface; and

advancing to a next media item received from the sending user.

6. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the sending user is associated with a plurality of media items, and further comprising displaying a preview of the plurality of media items in the first interface.

7. The method ofclaim 1, further comprising:

receiving a second media item from the sending user; and

generating a new conversation associated with the second media item.

8. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, the computer-readable storage medium including instructions that when executed by a computer, cause the computer to:

display, on a display, a first interface for a messaging inbox associated with a receiving user, the first interface displaying a selectable account element associated with a conversation involving the receiving user and a sending user;

receive a selection of the selectable account element;

in direct response to receiving the selection of the selectable account element, replace the first interface with a second interface configured to display a media item comprising an image or a video received from the sending user, wherein the second interface is configured to display the media item in a manner such that the media item substantially fills at least one of the dimensions of the display;

receive a textual message responding to the media item;

transmit the textual message to the sending user; and

display the textual message in a text display area in the second interface.

9. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 8, wherein the text area is superimposed on the media item.

10. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 8, wherein the instructions further configure the computer to:

receive a second textual message from the sending user; and

superimpose the second textual message on the media item as a response to the textual message.

11. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 10, wherein the instructions further configure the computer to progressively dim, blurring, or darkening the media item in response to each new textual message.

12. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 8, wherein the instructions further configure the computer to:

receive a navigation gesture in the second interface; and

advance to a next media item received from the sending user.

13. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 8, wherein the sending user is associated with a plurality of media items, and wherein the instructions further configure the computer to display a preview of the plurality of media items in the first interface.

14. The computer-readable storage medium ofclaim 8, wherein the instructions further configure the computer to:

receive a second media item from the sending user; and

generate a new conversation associated with the second media item.

15. A computing apparatus comprising:

a processor; and

a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, configure the apparatus to:

display, on a display, a first interface for a messaging inbox associated with a receiving user, the first interface displaying a selectable account element associated with a conversation involving the receiving user and a sending user;

receive a selection of the selectable account element;

in direct response to receiving the selection of the selectable account element, replace the first interface with a second interface configured to display a media item comprising an image or a video received from the sending user, wherein the second interface is configured to display the media item in a manner such that the media item substantially fills at least one of the dimensions of the display;

receive a textual message responding to the media item;

transmit the textual message to the sending user; and

display the textual message in a text display area in the second interface.

16. The computing apparatus ofclaim 15, wherein the text area is superimposed on the media item.

17. The computing apparatus ofclaim 15, wherein the instructions further configure the apparatus to:

receive a second textual message from the sending user; and

superimpose the second textual message on the media item as a response to the textual message.

18. The computing apparatus ofclaim 17, wherein the instructions further configure the apparatus to progressively dim, blurring, or darkening the media item in response to each new textual message.

19. The computing apparatus ofclaim 15, wherein the instructions further configure the apparatus to:

receive a navigation gesture in the second interface; and

advance to a next media item received from the sending user.

20. The computing apparatus ofclaim 15, wherein the sending user is associated with a plurality of media items, and wherein the instructions further configure the apparatus to display a preview of the plurality of media items in the first interface.

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