Patent ID: 9576325
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: G06F,G06Q

Claim:
1. A method comprising: receiving information about an event from an inviting user of a social networking system, the information including one or more of a location, a time, and one or more users of the social networking system who are associated with the event; accessing user profiles of social networking system users connected to the inviting user and not already associated with the event; selecting a set of candidate users from the social networking system users connected to the inviting user and not already associated with the event; for each candidate user, generating a prediction of whether a suggestion to the inviting user to invite a candidate user to the event would lead to the candidate user joining the event based on both (1) an affinity for the inviting user by the candidate user and (2) a history of the candidate user attending events that the inviting user attended, the affinity computed based on scores for edges stored in the social networking system indicating connections between the user and other objects or other users, and based on actions performed by the inviting user in the social networking system with the candidate user; selecting one or more candidate users from the set based on the prediction by: assigning a social value to each candidate user from the set; determining a probability that each candidate user from the set will join the event based on the prediction; determining an expected value for each candidate user from the set, wherein the expected value of a candidate user is determined based on the candidate user's social value and a probability that the candidate user will join the event; selecting one or more candidate users having highest expected values; and sending a suggestion to the inviting user to send an invitation for the event to the selected one or more candidate users.