Patent ID: 9311681
Filing Date: 2016-04-12
CPC Classification: G06Q,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: storing a user profile for each of a plurality of users of a social networking system; receiving a request to establish a new conversation that includes one or more of the users of the social networking system and an additional user, the additional user identified by an item of contact information that is not stored as contact information for any user profile of the plurality of users of the social networking system; establishing a conversation between the one or more users of the social networking system and the additional user identified in the request by sending a message to the one or more users via the social networking system and to the additional user via the item of contact information; creating a record for the additional user, the record including the item of contact information and an association with the conversation; receiving, at the social networking system, a reply to the message from the item of contact information, the reply sent by the additional user via the item of contact information; adding the reply to the conversation for viewing by the one or more users of the social networking system; subsequent to the conversation, receiving, at the social networking system, a claim by a claiming user of the social networking system, the claim identifying the item of contact information as belonging to a user profile of the claiming user; verifying that the item of contact information belongs to the claiming user; and storing an association, by a computing device, between the conversation identified by the item of contact information claimed by the claiming user and the user profile of the claiming user.