Suggested keywords

A method and system to suggest keywords to a social network member is described. A suggested keywords system, in one example embodiment, examines phrases that appear in profiles maintained by the on-line social networking system that are similar to the target profile and identifies those words and phrases that are most prominent in these profiles, utilizing a graph-based approach. These most prominent words and phrases may be presented to the target member as suggested keywords to be included in the member's professional summary.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This application relates to the technical fields of software and/or hardware technology and, in one example embodiment, to system and method to suggest keywords to a social network member.

BACKGROUND

An on-line social network may be viewed as a platform to connect people in virtual space. An on-line social network may be a web-based platform, such as, e.g., a social networking web site, and may be accessed by a use via a web browser or via a mobile application provided on a mobile phone, a tablet, etc. An on-line social network may be a business-focused social network that is designed specifically for the business community, where registered members establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally. Each registered member may be represented by a member profile. A member profile may be represented by one or more web pages, or a structured representation of the member's information in XML (Extensible Markup Language), JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) or similar format. A member's profile web page of a social networking web site may emphasize employment history and education of the associated member.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A method and system to suggest keywords to a social network member in an on-line social network is described. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of an embodiment of the present invention. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details.

As used herein, the term “or” may be construed in either an inclusive or exclusive sense. Similarly, the term “exemplary” is merely to mean an example of something or an exemplar and not necessarily a preferred or ideal means of accomplishing a goal. Additionally, although various exemplary embodiments discussed below may utilize Java-based servers and related environments, the embodiments are given merely for clarity in disclosure. Thus, any type of server environment, including various system architectures, may employ various embodiments of the application-centric resources system and method described herein and is considered as being within a scope of the present invention.

For the purposes of this description the phrase “an on-line social networking application” may be referred to as and used interchangeably with the phrase “an on-line social network” or merely “a social network.” It will also be noted that an on-line social network may be any type of an on-line social network, such as, e.g., a professional network, an interest-based network, or any on-line networking system that permits users to join as registered members. For the purposes of this description, registered members of an on-line social network may be referred to as simply members.

Each member of an on-line social network is represented by a member profile (also referred to as a profile of a member or simply a profile). A member profile may be associated with social links that indicate that member's connection to other members of the social network. A member profile may also include or be associated with comments or endorsements from other members of the on-line social network, with links to other network resources, such as, e.g., publications, etc. As mentioned above, an on-line social networking system may be designed to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally. Any two members of a social network may indicate their mutual willingness to be “connected” in the context of the social network, in that they can view each other's profiles, profile recommendations and endorsements for each other and otherwise be in touch via the social network.

The profile information of a social network member may include personal information such as, e.g., the name of the member, current and previous geographic location of the member, current and previous employment information of the member, information related to education of the member, information about professional accomplishments of the member, publications, patents, etc. The profile information of a social network member may also include information provided by the member's connections. Information provided by the member's connections may be, e.g., recommendations, endorsements and skills. The profile of a member may include several items or units of a profile. For example one unit of a profile may contain information about the member's education, while another unit may contain information about the member's current and past employment. The profile of a member may also include a profile summary, e.g., a professional summary of a member that summarizes professional experience and achievements of a member. The task of creating a professional summary may be challenging for an individual, as it may require creative synthesis of the information from the entire profile. At the same time, the content of a profile summary may be very important as it may affect the ranking of a member (e.g., professional ranking) in the on-line social network. A professional summary of a member may be viewed by employment recruiters who are interested in understanding a candidate's professional background. Thus, a poorly constructed summary may result in fewer professional opportunities for a member and may also affect how the profile of the member appears in search results.

In order to aid a user in writing a professional summary, it may be beneficial to utilize a system for generating suggested keywords for social network members (also referred to as suggested keywords system). A user (a member of the social networking system), who is being provided with suggested keywords, may be referred to as a target member. A profile associated with a target member may be referred to as a target profile. A suggested keywords system, in one example embodiment, examines phrases that appear in profiles maintained by the on-line social networking system that are similar to the target profile and identifies those words and phrases that are most prominent in these profiles. These most prominent words and phrases may be presented to the target member as suggested keywords to be included in the member's professional summary. An example screen500that illustrates presentation of suggested keywords to a user who is in the process of editing his professional summary is shown inFIG. 5.

It will be noted, that a phrase is to be understood to be an n-gram: a contiguous sequence of n items from a given sequence of text. In one example embodiment, the prominence of a phrase is expressed by a rank value. The phrases with the higher rank are considered to be more relevant in describing professional background of the target member. The target member may thus be presented with a predetermined number of top-ranking phrases as suggested keywords to be included in his professional summary. Respective ranks of the phrases with respect to a target member profile and its associated sub-network of similar profiles may be computed based on the frequency of occurrence of each of the phrases in each of the profiles in the sub-network, as well as frequency of occurrence of the phrases in search queries for which the target member profile or any of the similar profiles appear as results, and also based on respective similarity values for pairs of profiles, where each pair has the target profile and another profile from the sub-network.

The ranking of the phrases for a target profile may be recalculated periodically and stored in a database. The ranking of the phrases for a target profile may also be calculated on-demand, e.g., in response to detecting that a user has accessed a web page in the on-line social networking system that permits creating or editing of a summary section of the profile that represents the user.

In operation, according to one embodiment, the suggested keywords system may first determine a sub-network of similar member profiles for the target profiles in the on-line social network system. Similarity (also referred to as affinity) between two profiles maybe determined based on comparing various respective units of the member profiles, such respective positions, job descriptions, listed skills, education degrees, group memberships, etc. The system then extracts n-grams (phrases) from the profiles in the sub-network. The extracted profile data may be filtered to eliminate certain types of words and phrases, such as, e.g., non-English text, common or offensive words, proper nouns, email addresses, etc. For each member profile in the sub-network, determine frequencies of occurrence of each phrase from the extracted phrases. For example, a record indicating that a member profile identified by a member ID “22330283” contains ten occurrences of the phrase “management” and 5 occurrences of the phrase “business operations.”) This record may be represented as follows:

For each pair of phrases wiand wj, the system may determine a correlation value Cijwith respect to the target profile, as expressed by equation (1) below:

where Skis a value indicating similarity between the target profile and the k profile, wkiis a value indication the frequency of occurrence of the phrase wkiin the k profile, and wkjis a value indication the frequency of occurrence of the phrase wjin the k profile. The values wkiand wkjmay also represent occurrence frequencies of the respective phrases within the k-th profile weighted by factors dependent on the number of search queries in which the respective phrases appear.

Similarity Skmay be determined by a weighted combination of similarities between different sections of the target member profile and the k-th member profile. Similarities between pairs of sections of two profiles may be computed by representing each profile section in a vector space and then applying a dot product, cosine or another similarity function in that space. Depending on the specific section of the profile, dimensions of the corresponding vector space may represent, for example, all possible n-grams, skills, education levels, seniority levels, group memberships, and other relevant information. Weights for combining similarities between sections into a single profile similarity score may, for example, be determined heuristically, or by a statistical model trained to predict profile co-views as a function of pairwise similarities between different sections of the two profiles.

The suggested keywords system may then construct a graph, where the nodes of the graph represent phrases extracted from the sub-network of member profiles with respect to the target profile and the edges represent respective correlation values Cij. An example graph is shown inFIG. 6, where the example graph includes nodes representing phrases “Corporate development,” “Business operations,” “Executive,” “Strategy,” “Marketing,” etc. The values along the edges represent respective correlation values for the pairs of phrases. For example, the correlation value for (“Corporate development” “Business operations”) pair is 30. A graph, where the nodes of the graph represent phrases extracted from the sub-network of member profiles with respect to the target profile and the edges represent respective correlation values Cijmay be referred to as an affinity graph.

The suggested keywords system may then apply a ranking algorithm (e.g., a random walk algorithm) to the affinity graph in order to derive a rank value for each phrase represented by a node in the affinity graph. A certain number of highest-ranking phrases maybe stored in a database accessible by the on-line networking system.

According to a further embodiment, a suggested keywords system may be configured to generate, for n-grams that are present in the sub-network of member profiles that are similar to the target profile in the on-line social networking system, a so-called discriminative strength value. A discriminative strength value, computed for a particular n-gram with respect to a certain sub-network of member profiles, expresses probability of that particular n-gram being indicative of a member profile that contains that particular n-gram belonging to the sub-network. As the sub-network of profiles is determined with respect to a target profile, a certain number of n-grams with the highest discriminative strength values are selected as suggested keywords to be presented to a member represented by the target profile.

A discriminative strength value for an n-gram may be computed utilizing various statistical tools, e.g., a statistical hypothesis test for association between two variables. For example, in determining a discriminative strength value for an n-gram, a statistical too may take into account the number of profiles in the sub-network that include that n-gram and the number of profiles outside the sub-network that include that n-gram. A so-called indicator variable may be used to indicate whether a certain member profile in the on-line social network system is included in the sub-network of profiles that have been identified as similar to the target profile. The derived statistic for an n-gram—discriminative strength value—may be viewed as measuring the degree of correlation, or statistical dependence, between an n-gram and an indicator variable. Various statistical hypothesis tests for independence between variables may be used to assess the degree of dependence between two variables, an n-gram and an indicator variable, based on paired observations on those variables. Some examples of statistical hypothesis tests for independence between variables, which could be applied for obtaining discriminative values include G-squared, Pearson's chi-squared, Kruskal-Wallis.

A statistical tool may also utilize additional information in calculating a discriminative strength value for an n-gram. For example, a statistical tool may also utilize a similarity value representing similarity between the target profile and a profile that is being examined with respect to the presence or absence of the n-gram in that profile.

Once respective discriminative strength values have been calculated for n-grams extracted from member profiles that belong to the sub-network of member profiles, the suggested keywords system selects a pre-determined number of n-grams with the highest discriminative strength values and presents these n-grams to the member represented by the target profile as suggested keywords. Conversely, the n-grams with respective discriminative strength values below a certain threshold may be discarded as being of little or no significance with respect to describing a member represented by the target profile.

The suggested keywords system may also be configured to determine whether the summary section of the target profile already contains any of the high-scoring n-grams and, if so, provide a notification to the member represented by the target profile. For example, the suggested keywords system may be configured to identify a certain number of top-scoring n-grams. If the summary section of the target profile already contains one or more of these identified high-scoring n-grams, the suggested keywords system presents a subset of the top-scoring n-grams that does not include those n-grams that are already present in the summary section. A notification may be provided as a message stating that the member is already using certain powerful keywords in their summary. The keywords that appear in the summary section of the target profile that correspond to n-grams having their respective discriminative strength values within a certain number of top-scoring n-grams may be highlighted in the summary section of the target profile, as shown inFIG. 5(area520). A message of encouragement may also be provided, such as, e.g., “Nice work! You're already using 7 powerful keywords,” as shown inFIG. 5(area510).

An example method and system for generating suggested keywords for social network members may be implemented in the context of a network environment100illustrated inFIG. 1.

As shown inFIG. 1, the network environment100may include client systems110and120and a server system140. The client system120may be a mobile device, such as, e.g., a mobile phone or a tablet. The server system140, in one example embodiment, may host an on-line social network system142. As explained above, each member of an on-line social network is represented by a member profile that contains personal and professional information about the member and that may be associated with social links that indicate the member's connection to other member profiles in the on-line social network. Member profiles and related information may be stored in a database150as member profiles152.

The client systems110and120may be capable of accessing the server system140via a communications network130, utilizing, e.g., a browser application112executing on the client system110, or a mobile application executing on the client system120. The communications network130may be a public network (e.g., the Internet, a mobile communication network, or any other network capable of communicating digital data). As shown inFIG. 1, the server system140also hosts a suggested keywords system144. The suggested keywords system144may be configured to determine, for a member represented by a target profile in the on-line social network system142, phrases (also referred to as summary keywords or keywords) that are be representative of the member's professional skills and experience. In one example embodiment, in order to determine summary keywords for a target profile, the suggested keywords system144identifies a sub-network of profiles in the on-line social network system142that are similar to the target profile, extracts phrases from the profiles in the sub-network and calculates respective ranks or scores for the phrases.

These respective ranks or scores for the phrases may be calculated based on the similarity values determined for pairs of profiles in the sub-network and also based on respective frequency of occurrences of phrases in the profiles. In some embodiments, the respective ranks or scores for the phrases may be in the form of discriminative strength values. A discriminative strength value, computed for a particular phrase with respect to a certain sub-network of member profiles, expresses the probability of that particular phrase being indicative of a member profile that contains that particular phrase belonging to the sub-network.

The suggested keywords system144may be configured to store the top-ranking phrases (e.g.,100top-ranking phrases) as associated with the target profile, e.g., as ranked phrases154in the database150. The suggested keywords system144may be configured to present a certain number of top-ranking words to the member represented by the target profile, e.g., when the member is accessing his profile page for editing the profile. An example suggested keywords system144is illustrated inFIG. 2.

FIG. 2is a block diagram of a system200to generate keywords that members of an on-line social network may use in their profile summary, in accordance with one example embodiment. As shown inFIG. 2, the system200includes an access module210, a profile similarity module220, a phrases extractor230, a correlation value module240, and a ranking module250. The access module210may be configured to access a target member profile in the on-line social network system142ofFIG. 1. The profile similarity module220may be configured to determine, from profiles in the on-line social network system142, a plurality of similar member profiles. The similar member profiles are those profiles that are similar to the target member profile. As mentioned above, the plurality of similar member profiles and the target profile may be termed a sub-network of similar profiles in the on-line social network system. The phrases extractor230may be configured to extract a plurality of phrases from the sub-network of similar profiles.

The correlation value module240may be configured to calculate, for each pair of phrases from the plurality of phrases, a correlation value. The correlation value module240may be configured to calculate a correlation value for a first phrase and a second phrase from the plurality of phrases, utilizing frequencies of occurrence of the first phrase in member profiles from the sub-network of similar profiles and frequencies of occurrence of the second phrase in member profiles from the sub-network of similar profiles. The correlation value module240may be configured to also utilize similarity values determined for pairs of member profiles from the sub-network of similar profiles, e.g., as described above with reference to equation (1) shown above. The correlation value module240may be configured to also utilize frequencies of occurrence of each of the two phrases in search queries.

The ranking module250may be configured to determine a rank for each phrase in the plurality of phrases, based on respective correlation values of pairs of phrases from the plurality of phrases. In one embodiment, the ranking module250may be configured to construct an affinity graph, such that the nodes of the affinity graph represent respective phrases from the plurality of phrases and the edges in the affinity graph represent correlation values for respective nodes attached to the edges. The ranking module250may apply a ranking algorithm, such as the random walk algorithm, to the affinity graph to determine a rank for each phrase in the plurality of phrases represented by the nodes in the affinity graph.

In a further embodiment, the ranking module250may be configured to calculate respective discriminative strength values for phrases (also referred to as n-grams). As explained above, a discriminative strength value for a phrase expresses probability of the phrase being indicative of a member profile that contains the phrase belonging to the sub-network of similar profiles. The ranking module250may be configured to derive a statistic for a phrase, termed a discriminative strength value, which may be viewed as proportionality between the phrase and an indicator variable, where the indicator variable indicates whether a certain member profile in the on-line social network system is included in the sub-network of profiles that have been identified as similar to the target profile. In one embodiment, the ranking module250may be configured to employ Pearson's chi-squared test to assess whether paired observations on two variables, a phrase and an indicator variable, are independent of each other. The ranking module250may be configured to calculate respective discriminative values for phrases utilizing similarity values determined for pairs of member profiles from the sub-network of similar profiles. The ranking module250may be configured to recalculate, periodically, a rank or score for each phrase in the plurality of phrases.

Also shown inFIG. 2are a suggested keywords selector260, a presentation module270and a storage module280. The suggested keywords selector260may be configured to select a predetermined number of top-scoring (or top-ranking) phrases, based on the results produced by the ranking module250. For example, in an embodiment, where respective ranks of phrases is determined utilizing an affinity graph and respective correlation values of pairs of phrases, the suggested keywords selector260may be selecting a predetermined number of phrases that have the highest rank. In an embodiment, where the ranking module250derives respective discriminative strength values for phrases, the suggested keywords selector260may be selecting a predetermined number of phrases that have the highest discriminative strength values. The presentation module270may be configured to present the selected phrases to a member represented by the target member profile. The storage module280may be configured to store respective discriminative strength values or ranks determined by the ranking module250for future use, e.g., in the database150ofFIG. 1as ranked phrases154.

The suggested keywords selector260may also be configured to determine that the summary section of the target profile contains one or more phrases that are within a certain threshold number of phrases having the highest respective ranks (e.g., the highest discriminative values). The presentation module270may be configured to present the selected phrases to a member represented by the target member profile, excluding the one or more phrases that are present in the summary section of the target profile. The presentation module270may also be configured to present a notification to the member represented by the target profile, e.g., in response to the determining that the summary section of the target profile contains the one or more phrases. A notification may be a message of encouragement, such as, e.g., “Nice work! You're already using 7 powerful keywords,” as shown inFIG. 5(area510). Some operations performed by the system200may be described with reference toFIG. 3.

FIG. 3is a flow chart of a method300to generate keywords that members of an on-line social network may use in their profile summary, according to one example embodiment. The method300may be performed by processing logic that may comprise hardware (e.g., dedicated logic, programmable logic, microcode, etc.), software (such as run on a general purpose computer system or a dedicated machine), or a combination of both. In one example embodiment, the processing logic resides at the server system140ofFIG. 1and, specifically, at the system200shown inFIG. 2.

As shown inFIG. 3, the method300commences at operation310, when the access module210accesses a target member profile in the on-line social network system142ofFIG. 1. At operation320, the profile similarity module220determines, from profiles in the on-line social network system142, a plurality of similar member profiles. As mentioned above, the similar member profiles are those profiles that are similar to the target member profile. These similar profiles, together with the target profile, make up a sub-network of similar profiles. At operation330, the phrases extractor230extracts a plurality of phrases from the sub-network of similar profiles. The correlation value module240calculates a correlation value for each pair of phrases from the plurality of phrases, at operation340. At operation320, the ranking module250determines a rank for each phrase in the plurality of phrases, based on respective correlation values of pairs of phrases from the plurality of phrases. As explained above, the calculating of respective ranks for phrases may include constructing an affinity graph with the nodes representing respective phrases from the plurality of phrases and the edges representing correlation values for associated nodes, and applying a ranking algorithm to the affinity graph.

FIG. 4is a flow chart of a method400a method to suggest keywords to a social network member, utilizing discriminative strength values, according to one example embodiment. The method400may be performed by processing logic that may comprise hardware (e.g., dedicated logic, programmable logic, microcode, etc.), software (such as run on a general purpose computer system or a dedicated machine), or a combination of both. In one example embodiment, the processing logic resides at the server system140ofFIG. 1and, specifically, at the system200shown inFIG. 2.

As shown inFIG. 4, the method400commences at operation410, when the access module210ofFIG. 2accesses a target member profile in the on-line social network system142ofFIG. 1. At operation420, the profile similarity module220ofFIG. 2determines, from profiles in the on-line social network system142, a plurality of similar member profiles. As mentioned above, the similar member profiles are those profiles that are similar to the target member profile. These similar profiles, together with the target profile, make up a sub-network of similar profiles. At operation430, the phrases extractor240ofFIG. 2extracts a plurality of phrases from the sub-network of similar profiles. The ranking module250ofFIG. 2calculates respective discriminative strength values for phrases (also referred as n-grams) at operation440. As explained above, a discriminative strength value for a phrase expresses probability of the phrase being indicative of a member profile that contains the phrase belonging to the sub-network of similar profiles. At operation450, the suggested keywords selector260ofFIG. 2identifies suggested keywords for a summary section of the target profile, based on the respective discriminative strength values of the phrases. In one embodiment, the suggested keywords selector260suggested keywords for the summary section of the target profile in response to detecting an access request to a webpage that includes a summary section of the target member profile.

The example computer system700includes a processor702(e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU) or both), a main memory704and a static memory706, which communicate with each other via a bus707. The computer system700may further include a video display unit710(e.g., a liquid crystal display (LCD) or a cathode ray tube (CRT)). The computer system700also includes an alpha-numeric input device712(e.g., a keyboard), a user interface (UI) navigation device714(e.g., a cursor control device), a disk drive unit716, a signal generation device718(e.g., a speaker) and a network interface device720.

The disk drive unit716includes a machine-readable medium722on which is stored one or more sets of instructions and data structures (e.g., software724) embodying or utilized by any one or more of the methodologies or functions described herein. The software724may also reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory704and/or within the processor702during execution thereof by the computer system700, with the main memory704and the processor702also constituting machine-readable media.

The software724may further be transmitted or received over a network726via the network interface device720utilizing any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols (e.g., Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)).

The embodiments described herein may be implemented in an operating environment comprising software installed on a computer, in hardware, or in a combination of software and hardware. Such embodiments of the inventive subject matter may be referred to herein, individually or collectively, by the term “invention” merely for convenience and without intending to voluntarily limit the scope of this application to any single invention or inventive concept if more than one is, in fact, disclosed.

Modules, Components and Logic

Thus, a method and system to suggest keywords to a social network member has been described. Although embodiments have been described with reference to specific example embodiments, it will be evident that various modifications and changes may be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader scope of the inventive subject matter. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.