Patent ID: 11948208
Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G  H

Claim 14:
15. A device for selectively creating different graphical representations of a user to display to a plurality of end users in a network-based communication environment based on a social graph, the social graph having a plurality of social distances between the user and the plurality of end users, the device comprising:
means for determining a first social distance between the user and a first end user of the plurality of end users based upon the social graph and the plurality of social distances, wherein the social graph includes a plurality of nodes that represent the user and each of the plurality of end-users, the plurality of nodes being separated by a plurality of edges that represent a relationship between each node of the plurality nodes, the plurality of social distances being a number of edges along a shortest path between the user and each end-user of the plurality of end-users and the first social distance is a first number of edges between a user node in the plurality of nodes that represents the user and a first user node in the plurality of nodes that represents the first end user;
means for determining that the first social distance meets a preset threshold condition;
responsive to the first social distance meeting the preset threshold condition, means for selecting a first graphical representation of the user from a plurality of graphical representations of the user based on the first social distance;
means for providing the first graphical representation of the user for display to the first end user of the plurality of end users in the network-based communication environment;
responsive to a second social distance of a second end user not meeting the preset threshold condition or responsive to determining that the second end user is not on the social graph, means for selecting a second graphical representation of the user, the second graphical representation being different from the first graphical representation, wherein the difference between the first graphical representation and the second graphical representation is based on the second social distance being greater than the first social distance or based upon the second end user not being on the social graph; and
means for providing the second graphical representation of the user for display to the second end user of the plurality of end users in the network-based communication environment.