Patent ID: 8316056
Filing Date: 2012-11-20
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: receiving a textual query from a client device, the query associated with a searching user of a social networking system; identifying a set of first-order connections of the searching user, wherein the first-order connections comprise one or more other users with whom the searching user is connected in the social networking system, each of the one or more other users having an associated connections table in the social networking system, the connections table for a user comprising a set of name tokens of other users of with whom the user is connected in the social networking system, each name token having an associated user identifier of a user to which the name token corresponds; identifying a first set of second-order connections of the searching user that match the query based on the identified first-order connections, wherein the second-order connections comprise one or more other users with whom a first-order connection is connected in the social networking system, the identifying the set of second-order connections comprising: determining a number of first-order connections in common between the searching user and one or more of the identified second-order connections; generating a result set based at least in part on the determined number of first-order connections in common, the result set including one or more of the identified second-order connections; and providing at least a portion of the result set to the client device in response to the query.