Patent ID: 9020835
Filing Date: 2015-04-28
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: receiving from an advertiser via an interface of a social networking system one or more seeds for suggesting targeting criteria for an advertisement; identifying one or more seed objects in a social graph maintained by the social networking system based on the received seeds, the social graph stored in a database and including nodes corresponding to objects and connections representing relationships established in the social networking system between connected objects; querying the database to identify a plurality of other objects based on connections in the social graph between the seed object and the identified other objects; computing, using a processor of the social networking system, a similarity between one or more of the seed objects and each of the plurality of other objects associated with nodes in the social graph, the similarity between a seed object and the other object determined based at least in part on a comparison of nodes in the social graph having connections to both the node associated with the other object and to the node associated with the seed object and nodes in the social graph not having connections to both the node associated with the other object and to the node associated with the seed object; determining one or more candidate objects selected from the plurality of other objects based on the computed similarities; presenting the determined candidate objects to the advertiser; receiving from the advertiser a selection of one or more target objects from the candidate objects for use in the targeting criteria for the advertisement; and determining, using the processor of the social networking system, one or more targeting criteria for the advertisement based on the selected target objects, users of the social networking system having a connection to at least one of the selected target objects identified as eligible to receive the advertisement.