Patent Publication Number: US-10311063-B2

Title: Context-based object retrieval in a social networking system

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/553,760, filed on Jul. 19, 2012, which is incorporated herein by reference. 
    
    
     BACKGROUND 
     The present invention generally relates to the field of computer data storage and retrieval, and more specifically, to performing searches for objects within a social networking system. 
     Modern computing systems store vast amounts of data, and as a consequence it has become increasingly important to provide users with effective ways to locate information that is relevant to their interests. One area in which a large amount of information is involved is social networking. Social networking systems allow users to designate other users as friends (or otherwise connect to or form relationships with other users), contribute and interact with media items, use applications, join groups, list and confirm attendance at events, create pages, and perform other tasks that facilitate social interaction. Since each of these tasks may involve various data objects, social networking systems are good examples of the demand for systems that help users locate relevant information from within a large set of information tracked or otherwise used by the system. 
     Searches for information on a social networking system sometimes take place within a particular context. For example, users might specify some searches from within a data search area located on a page about restaurants. Although it might be helpful to customize a search to result in, or emphasize, objects particularly relevant to the context (e.g., restaurants), the search functionality currently available on social networking systems typically does not include a way to determine what the search context is, nor to take that search context into account when performing a search. This makes locating information of particular relevance to a given search more challenging. 
     SUMMARY 
     Embodiments of the invention improve the ability of users of a social networking system to search for information that is likely to be relevant to them by learning and/or applying a search context associated with selector components used to search for objects of the social networking system. The search context is specific to the use of an individual selector and thus need not be as general as the context of an entire page or set of pages in which selectors can be embedded. Thus, for example, one search on a particular restaurant-related page may be specified using a first selector embedded within a data search area associated with the menu of the restaurant (e.g., titled “Search our menu”), and a different search on the same page may be specified using a second selector within the data search area associated with particular events that will be taking place at that restaurant (e.g., titled “Search upcoming events”). 
     In one embodiment, the social networking system learns the context of a selector by monitoring user selections from prior search results performed using the selector. For example, if users used a newly-added selector to search for objects and in the majority of cases resulted in the user selecting an object having a particular type, then that type could be associated with the selector as being the primary type in the selector context. 
     The context of a selector—whether learned automatically by the social networking system, set manually by a user, or some combination thereof—can be applied in various ways to control the objects that are displayed to users as search results, and to control the manner in which the objects are displayed. For example, in one embodiment, objects without types that match the selector are filtered out of search results produced by that selector. In one embodiment, objects in the search results produced by a selector are ranked based upon whether, or to what degree, the types of the objects match those of the selector context. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS 
         FIGS. 1A and 1B  provide examples of the use of selectors in different contexts. 
         FIG. 2  is a high-level block diagram of a computing environment, according to one embodiment. 
         FIG. 3  depicts an example of a hierarchy for categorizing pages and other objects of a social networking system, according to one embodiment. 
         FIG. 4  is a flowchart depicting the operations performed when learning the type(s) associated with a given selector, according to one embodiment. 
         FIG. 5  is a flowchart depicting the operations performed by a selector in response to a search for objects, according to one embodiment. 
         FIG. 6  illustrates a sample page administrator user interface for a fictional bookstore. 
     
    
    
     The figures depict embodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein. 
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Example User Interfaces 
       FIGS. 1A and 1B  are screen shots providing examples of “selectors,” user interface elements of a social networking system that allow users to search for and locate objects of the social networking system that are particularly relevant to the context in which the search takes place. For example,  FIG. 1A  depicts a portion of a web-based user interface  101  for a toy store. The user interface  101  includes a selector  105 , implemented as a text entry area, into which a user has entered the characters “ra”, the first two characters of a (presumably longer) query for items within the stock of the toy store. In response to the entry of the characters in the selector  105 , the social networking system has provided a corresponding set of search results  110 , each item of which matches the entered characters. (Specifically, each of the objects in the search results  110  has a name with a word for which the entered characters are a prefix. For example, the entered characters “ra” are a prefix to the words “Razor,” “Ray,” “race,” “Randomized,” and “Ray,” in the search results  110 .) The use of the selector  105  to retrieve objects of the social networking system allows the toy store web page to quickly provide suggestions to users about what they are searching for, even though the user has only typed a few characters, which is a great user convenience. 
     Note that the selector  105  exists within the context of a page for a toy store, and more specifically, corresponds to a search of the stock of the toy store. In contrast, the social networking system may include data on an enormous number of distinct objects (e.g., millions or billions) of widely varying types (e.g., people, places, events, or things), not all of which will be relevant to the search. Thus, it would be particularly beneficial to a user to emphasize the objects that are relevant to the search context, rather than merely selecting objects based purely on the characters entered into the selector  105 . 
     Accordingly, the search results  110  of the selector  105  emphasize objects corresponding to products, such as the razor scooters, ray guns, car race tracks, and games corresponding to objects  110 A-D. The search results  110  also include a web page for a person—a fictitious celebrity named “Ray Allend”—having a name matching the entered characters, and included due to the celebrity&#39;s immense popularity. However, the page is given a lower rank in the search results than the products because it is not of the expected type (i.e., it is a page rather than a product), and hence the inclusion of the page in the search results does not distract the user from what he or she was likely looking for (i.e., products). 
       FIG. 1B  is a screen shot illustrating the use of a selector in a different context. Specifically,  FIG. 1B  depicts a web-based user interface  151  for a commercial web site selling autographs of celebrities. Thus, whereas users of the toy store of  FIG. 1A  would tend to search for products (e.g., toys) using the selector  105 , users of the autograph website of  FIG. 1B  would instead tend to search for people (i.e., the celebrities in whose autographs the users are interested). Thus, the objects of interest in  FIG. 1B  would typically be people, or web pages dedicated to those people. 
     Accordingly, although the same characters (i.e., “ra”) are entered into the selector  155  of  FIG. 1B , they produce a different set of search results than in  FIG. 1A . Specifically, the results  160  include three web pages dedicated to people having names matching the entered characters (namely, “Ray Allend,” “Ramon Jones,” and “Alice Rafferty”), followed by a video game with a name matching the entered characters (“Daytona Racer 2012”) and included due to its large global popularity. 
     Now that examples of selectors have been provided, system architectures and techniques for implementing the selectors are discussed below. 
     System Architecture 
       FIG. 2  is a high-level block diagram of a computing environment according to one embodiment.  FIG. 2  illustrates a social networking system  200 , a client device  280 , and a third party website  290  connected by a network  270 . A user of the client device  280  interacts with the social networking system  200  via an application such as a web browser, performing operations such as browsing content, posting messages, performing queries for people or other content of interest, and the like. The user can also use the client device  280  to interact with the third party website  290 . Additionally, the third party website  290  can also interact with the social networking system  200  to obtain or to display data of the social networking system, either directly or indirectly. 
     The social networking system  200  comprises a number of components used to store information on objects represented in or by the social networking environment, and on the relationships of the objects. The social networking system  200  additionally comprises components to enable clients of the system—such as a human user of the client device  280  interactively using the system, or a component of the third party website  290  requesting information using an externalization module  250  (described further below)—to query the system for information of interest. 
     More specifically, the social networking system  200  comprises an object store  210  that stores information on various objects tracked by the social networking system  200 . These objects may represent a variety of things with which a user may interact in the social networking system  200 , including, without limitation, other users  211  of the social networking system (represented, e.g., as a profile object for the user), applications  212  (e.g., a game playable within the social networking system), events  213  (e.g., a concert that users may attend), groups  214  to which users may belong, pages  215  (e.g., pages constituting a particular person or organization&#39;s presence on the system, such as pages about the fictitious celebrity “Ray Allend,” or pages about different aspects of a restaurant), fields  225  (discrete units of semantically-meaningful information on a page, such as the hours of operation or the telephone number listed on a business page), items of media  216  (e.g., pictures, videos, audio, text, or any other type of media content), locations  217  associated with a user (e.g., “San Jose, Calif., USA”), and concepts  218  or other terms (e.g., an object corresponding to the concept “Victorian literature,” or to the product “Razor scooter”). In one embodiment, the object store  210  also stores object selectors  219 , which are objects used to query, display, and select other objects in the object store  210 , as described further below with respect to  FIG. 4 . The object store  210  may further store objects representing other data routinely produced by users of the social networking system  200 , such as inbox messages, status updates, comments, notes, and postings. An object in the object store  210  may represent an entity existing within the social networking system (e.g., an application  212  available on the social networking system), a virtual entity that exists outside the domain of the social networking system (e.g., a website), or a real-world entity (e.g., a person, a sports team, or a retail store). 
     The object store  210  may store all of the objects existing within the social networking system  200 , such as the code of an application  212 , or the image data associated with an image media item  216 . Alternatively, for virtual entities existing outside of the social networking system  200 , the object store  210  may contain some form of pointer or reference to the entities, such as the uniform resource locator (URL) of an external media item  216 . Additionally, the object store  210  may also store metadata associated with the objects, such as a name describing the object (e.g. “Ray Allend” for a person, “Birthday Reminder” for an application, or “Penguin Fanciers” for a group), an image representing the object (e.g., a user profile picture), or one or more tags assigned to the object by users (e.g. the textual strings “game”, “crime”, and “strategy” for a strategy game application). Different types of objects may have different types of metadata, such as a set of associated users  211  for a group  214 , a media type (e.g., “video”) for a media item object  216 , and a unique user ID and name tokens (e.g., separate first and last names “Ray” and “Allend”) for a user object  211 . 
     In one embodiment, the object store  210  associates an object type with each object. The types may be a single atomic type, or they may be compound types describing a hierarchy of related types or sub-types. For example, a user object  211  (for which no further qualifications are needed) might have the type “User,” whereas a page object  215  representing a Japanese restaurant might have the type “Page.Business.Restaurant.Japanese,” representing that the object is a page, and more specifically, a page representing a business, and yet more specifically a restaurant business, and still more specifically a Japanese restaurant business. 
     In one embodiment, the social networking system  200  captures the relationship of various types of objects in a type graph  221  that can be used to categorize pages  215  or other types of objects, fields  225  within individual pages  215 , and the like.  FIG. 3  depicts one example of such a hierarchy for the type graph  221 . In the example, “Object” is the universally-applicable type from which all others derive, and “Page”  302  (the type of page objects  215 ) and “Concept”  304  (the type of concept objects  218 ) are two of the types of objects in the object store  210 . In turn, “Business”  305 , “Arts,” and “Sports” are broad top-level types  218 , and the type “Business” has sub-types “Restaurant” and “Bookstore” (two examples of commercial entities), and “Restaurant” still further has sub-types “Japanese” and “Italian” (representing different types of cuisine in which restaurants can specialize). Similarly, the “Concept” type in turn has a sub-type “Product” (representing items for sale), and “Product” in turn has its own sub-type “Toy” (representing a particular type of item for sale). Thus, the hierarchy relates different types as generalizations or specializations of other types. 
     In one embodiment, each type applicable to a page  215  in the type graph  221 —e.g., the Page type  302  of  FIG. 3 , and its various sub-types—can have associated field types  303  that specify properties that the page type has, or may have. In the example of  FIG. 3 , for instance, the “Business” page type  305  has associated field types “Map,” “Hours,” and “Telephone”  306 , which respectively represent a map of the business location, the times of day that the business is open to customers and the telephone number at which the business can be reached. Further, the “Restaurant” page type  307  has the associated field type “Menu,” which represents a set of food items that a given restaurant serves. In one embodiment, the field types  303  themselves are implemented as concepts  304 . In one embodiment, “child” types inherit the fields of their “ancestor” types, such as the “Restaurant” page type  307  also having the Map, Hours, and Telephone fields of the “Business” parent type. 
     In one embodiment, the hierarchy is manually created by the operators of the social networking system  200 . In other embodiments, the hierarchy is generated dynamically, either partially or entirely. For example, the discussion of  FIG. 6 , below, includes a description of the dynamic association of fields  225  with other types in the type graph  221 . 
     It is appreciated that the hierarchy of  FIG. 3  is purely for purposes of example, and that in practice a type hierarchy could have any number of types and/or fields, arranged in any manner. 
     Returning again to  FIG. 2 , in one embodiment the social networking system  200  further comprises a graph information store  220  that represents the objects of the object store  210  as nodes that are linked together in a “social graph.” The graph information store  220  thus comprises information about the relationships between or among the objects, represented as the edges connecting the various object nodes. Various examples of edges in the social graph include: an edge between two user objects  211  representing that the users have a relationship in the social networking system (e.g., are friends, or have communicated, viewed the other&#39;s profile, or interacted in some way), an edge between a user object  211  and an application object  212  representing that the user has used the application, and an edge between a user object  211  and a group object  214  representing that the user belongs to the group, and an edge between a user object  211  and a page object  215  representing that the user has viewed the page. 
     For example, if one user  211  establishes a relationship with another user in the social networking system, the two users are each represented as a node, and the edge between them represents the established relationship; the two users are then said to be connected in the social network system. Continuing this example, one of these users may send a message to the other user within the social networking system. This act of sending the message is another edge between those two nodes, which can be stored and/or tracked by the social networking system. The message itself may be treated as a node. In another example, one user may tag another user in an image that is maintained by the social networking system. This tagging action may create edges between the users as well as an edge between each of the users and the image, which is also a node. In yet another example, if a user confirms attending an event, the user and the event are nodes, where the indication of whether or not the user will attend the event is the edge. Using a social graph, therefore, a social networking system may keep track of many different types of objects and edges (the interactions and connections among those objects), thereby maintaining an extremely rich store of socially relevant information. 
     In one embodiment, edges in the graph information store  220  have associated metadata, such as a label describing the type of relationship (e.g., “friend” as the label between two user objects), and/or a value quantifying the strength of the relationship. Further, a relationship degree, or “distance,” between any two objects can be ascertained by determining the number of edges on the shortest path between the objects. For example, two user objects that have an edge between them (e.g., denoting a friendship relationship) have a relationship degree (or “distance”) of one and are considered first-order connections. Similarly, if a user object A is a first-order connection of user object B but not of user object C, and B is a first-order connection of C, then objects A and C have a relationship degree of two, indicating that C is a second-order connection of A (and vice-versa). 
     Pages  215  may also be associated with corresponding specific types, such as a page dedicated to a particular restaurant business specializing in Japanese cuisine being associated with the specific type “Object.Page.Business.Restaurant.Japanese,” as depicted in  FIG. 3 . Thus, in one embodiment the graph information store  220  includes a set of page-type associations  222 , each association relating a particular page  215  to a corresponding type. 
     In one embodiment, the page-type associations  222  are specified manually by the creators of the pages. In one such embodiment, at the time of page creation the social networking system  200  provides the creator of a page  215  with the opportunity to specify a concept  218  that the page represents, and the page-type associations  222  are updated accordingly. In one embodiment, the social networking system  200  presents the creator of the page with a series of choices corresponding to type/sub-type relationships embodied by the type graph  221 . Referring to the example of  FIG. 3 , the social networking system  200  might first present a page creator creating a page about a Japanese restaurant with a choice of whether the page is about business, arts, or sports. In response to the answer “business,” the social networking system  200  would then present the creator with the choice of whether the page is more specifically about a restaurant or a bookstore, and so forth, until the final type “Japanese” is arrived at. (In one embodiment, the type is represented as the entire “path” of types and sub-types, such as Object→Page→Business→Restaurant→Japanese.) 
     Selectors  219  may be embedded in any number of different types of pages  215 , each page potentially representing a different context. Additionally, different selectors may be embedded within the same page, such as one selector on a restaurant page for selecting food items on the menu, and one for selecting the different songs typically played by the restaurant. To track the different contexts of the different selectors, in one embodiment the graph information  220  additionally comprises selector-type associations  223  that specify associations between particular selectors  219  and a set of one or more corresponding types that acts as a context that influences selector output. For example, referring back to  FIG. 1A , the selector  105  might be associated with a context that includes the “Product” type of  FIG. 3 , or its more specific “Toy” sub-type, given that the purpose of the selector  105  is to select names of objects relevant to toys to be purchased. In contrast, the selector  155  of  FIG. 1B  might be associated with the “User” or “Page” types of  FIG. 3 , given that its purpose is to select names of celebrities (e.g., users  211  of the social networking system  200 , or pages  215  devoted to the celebrities). 
     Selector Implementation 
     The selector-type associations  223  may be determined in different ways in different embodiments. For example, in one embodiment page creators manually specify one or more associated types for each selector  219  that they add to their pages  215 , e.g., by answering a series of questions based on the type graph  221 . (For example, a type for the selector  215  could be obtained by a series of questions such as “Do your users wish to find other users, pages, fields, or concepts?”; “Does the concept relate to products or literature?”; “Is the product a toy or hardware?”) 
     In many instances, it is appropriate for a page creator to manually specify the type(s) associated with a selector. In other cases, however, the page creator may not wish to take the time to specify the associated types, or the page creator may not know ahead of time which types of objects the selector will typically be used to select. Thus, in another embodiment the social networking system  200  comprises a selector context learning module  260  that learns the selector context—that is, one or more types of particular relevance to a given selector based on previous user selections using the selector. In this embodiment, the page creator may add a particular selector to a page  215  without any manually specified context. As a result, when users use the selector to select objects, the selector initially does not adjust the search results based on the context. However, the selector context learning module  260  monitors the types of the objects selected from the selector result set and determines the types that should be associated with the selector based on counts of the different selected types. 
       FIG. 4  is a flowchart depicting the operations that the selector context learning module  260  performs when learning the type(s) associated with a given selector  219 , according to one embodiment. Initially, there is no context—that is, no object types—associated with the selector. The selector  219  receives  410  input, such as the typed characters “ra” in  FIG. 1A . The selector  219  then identifies  420  a result set consisting of objects matching the received input, such as all objects (or some subset thereof) having a name with at least one word beginning with the typed characters. Alternatively, the object names need not begin with the typed characters, but may have the typed characters anywhere within the object names; e.g., “ra” would also match “Grape” as well as “Ray”. 
     When identifying  420  and/or modifying the result set, the selector  219  may optionally also take into account information in the social networking system  200  about the user providing the query input that can be used to determine an estimated degree of the user for the various objects in the result set. This user information may include connections of the user in the graph information store  220 , such as other users  211  with whom the user has a friend relationship either directly or indirectly, media items  216  that the user has viewed, a geographic or graph distance between the user and an object in the result set, and the like. For example, referring back to  FIG. 1B , the web page for the person “Ramon Jones”  160 B could be omitted from the results  160  if neither the user entering the query nor his connections (e.g., friends) with a relationship degree of 2 or less has ever interacted with the page  160 B, expressed an interest in a concept  218  represented by the page, or the like. The user information may also include actions that the user has performed on the social networking system  200 , such as voting in polls, specifying data in the user&#39;s profile, viewing a particular page, and the like. (In some embodiments, an action of a user  211  with respect to another object in the object store  210  of the social networking system  200  may be represented as a connection in the graph information  220 , such as a connection between a user  211  and a page  215  representing that the user viewed the page.) 
     The objects in the result set can be ranked in any number of ways, e.g., according to factors such as object global popularity across all users, distance from the searching user to the object in the object graph of the graph information store  220 , and the like. 
     The selector  219  then receives  430  a user selection of one of the objects in the result set, and determines  440  the type associated with that selected object (e.g., by examining a type attribute associated with the object). 
     Operations  410 - 440  may occur a number of times, until the context learning module  260  has obtained enough data to identify an associated type for the selector. For example, in one embodiment, the selector context learning module  260  identifies, as the primary associated type for a selector, any type for which associated objects are selected using the selector over 50% of the time, and at least 3 times in total; a type is identified as a secondary type of it is selected using the selector over 25% of the time, and at least 2 times in total. Once the context learning module  260  has enough data to identify one or more associated types, it associates the type(s) with the selector  219  via the selector-type associations  223 . 
     In one embodiment, the selector context learning module  260  considers all selections of objects, by any user, thus determining the selector context from aggregate user behavior. In other embodiments, the selector context learning module  260  instead personalizes the selector context for each user by taking into account only the selections of that user for that selector. For example, assume that “Video game” and “Scooter” are both sub-types of a general “Toy” type of  FIG. 3 . Further assume that a particular selector is associated with type “Toy”, and a particular user usually selects toys of type “Video game,” specifically, from search results in the selector, but that may not be the case for most users of that selector. In such a case, the selector context learning module  260  might associate the type of that selector to “Video game” for that particular user, but not for all users. Thus, when that particular user enters queries into that selector, they will be biased to display video games—which is presumably the preferred toy of that user—thereby presenting the user with more relevant results. 
     As a concrete example of the operations of  FIG. 4 , referring back to  FIG. 1A , assume that the selector  105  used to search the toy store&#39;s inventory were added to the page without any initial associated context. If the selector  105  receives  410  the characters “ra” due to user keystrokes in the selector text area, the selector would then identify  420  a result set of objects with names containing words beginning with “ra,” without regard to the types of the objects. For example, the result  110 E corresponding to the person “Ray Allend” might be ranked first due its corresponding popularity, even though it does not correspond to an object of type “Toy,” or even of type Product. Similarly, the result set might include an object named “Rat” of type “Animal” and an object named “RATATOUILLE” of type “Movie,” even though these objects are not of type “Toy.” However, if the first three uses of the selector resulted in the selector  105  receiving  430  selections of objects that were all of type “Toy,” the selector context learning module  260  might determine  440  that the selector context includes the type “Toy” and associate  450  “Toy” as the primary context type of the selector. After this, the result sets obtained from that selector would be biased towards type “Toy,” e.g., by ranking objects of type “Toy” more highly in the result set, as illustrated in the result set of  FIG. 1A . Thus, for example, a subsequent query for the characters “ra” might (as in  FIG. 1A ) result in the toy objects “Razor scooter,” “Ray gun,” “Car race track,” and “Randomized game” (as well as the non-toy, but globally-popular, page for the person “Ray Allend”), and a query for the characters “ro” might result in the toy objects “Rocket” and “Robot.” 
     In one embodiment, the selector context learning module  260  employs a hybrid approach, assigning an initial context for a selector but changing the context subject to subsequent user selections indicating that the initial assignment was inaccurate. For example, the page creator of the autograph business of  FIG. 1B  might set the primary type for the selector  155  to “User” (a user of the social networking system  200 ), whereas the users far more often select objects of type “Page,” corresponding to pages  215  dedicated to the celebrities in question (who may or may not be users of the social networking system). In such a case, the selector context learning module  260  would alter the primary associated type from “User” to “Page” after receiving a number of user selections of type “Page” from the selector result sets. As another example, the selector context learning module  260  might set the default context for a page based on the type of the page. For example, the default context for a page of type “Business” could be set to include the type “Product,” reflecting that selectors on business pages are typically used to find products. However, for a selector on a business page intended to be used to identify store locations in given cities, the selector context learning module  260  could change the context to instead include the type “Location,” based on user selections of Location objects initially displayed towards the bottom of the result set. As another example, the selector context learning module  260  might not completely change the type associated with a selector, but merely refine it to a sub-type, such as changing “Toy” to “Video game”, as discussed above. 
     Once a particular selector  219  has an associated context—e.g., due to the selector context learning module  260  learning the context—the selector can apply that context to display more useful search results to users.  FIG. 5  is a flowchart depicting the operations performed by a selector  219  in response to a search for objects, according to one embodiment. The selector  219  receives  510  input and identifies  520  a result set of objects matching that input, as described above with respect to operations  410 - 420  of  FIG. 4 . The selector  219  then identifies  530  the types of the objects in the result set, as described above with respect operations  440 . The selector  219  also identifies  540  the type or types that make up the context associated with the selector, e.g., as learned by the selector context learning module  260 . 
     A selector  219  can modify  550  the result set based on the selector context in different manners in different embodiments. In one embodiment, a selector  219  filters out—from the result set of objects that match the search characters entered into the selector—any objects having a type that does not match any type within the selector context. (In embodiments such as that of  FIG. 3 , where the types are arranged hierarchically into super types and subtypes, the type of an object is said to match a type within the selector context if the object type is the same as, or a subtype of, the type within the selector context. For example, the object type “Restaurant” in  FIG. 3  would match the selector context type “Business” because “Restaurant” is a subtype of “Business.”) 
     In other embodiments, a selector  219  does not filter out result set objects with types not matching the selector context, but rather adjusts ranking scores of the objects. For example, a selector  219  could penalize an object by some predetermined amount or percentage for lacking a matching type. This causes objects without matching types to tend to be ranked lower in the result set than they would be if selector context were not taken into account. In another embodiment, objects without matching types are assigned to a secondary group of objects, none of which are displayed earlier in the result set than any of the displayed objects with matching types. Thus, for example, the celebrity “Ray Allend” of  FIG. 1A , although not of type “Toy,” is still shown within the result set, but is displayed after every one of the four objects that are of type “Toy.” Either of these approaches allows important objects of other types to continue to be displayed, providing the user with other possible options while still prominently displaying the objects expected to best match the search context. Providing other options allows the context of the selector to be re-learned over time if users begin selecting objects of types different from those typically selected at an earlier date. 
     The selector  219  can also adjust ranking scores within those types that are part of its context. For example, objects of the result set matching the primary associated type can be ranked more highly than those matching a secondary associated type. 
     In one embodiment, the ranking scores of the objects are not calculated solely upon whether the object types match a type within the selector context, but rather on how closely the types match. In one embodiment, the closeness of the match is determined by a shortest graph distance between the types in the type graph  221 . For example, referring back to  FIG. 3 , if the context of a particular selector  219  had the type Object.Page.Business.Restaurant.Japanese, and an object in the initial result set (based only on a textual character match) were of type Object.Page.Business.Restaurant.Italian, the closeness would reflect a distance of 2, i.e., the number of transitions to go from one node to the closest common parent and thence to the other node. 
     Referring again to  FIG. 2 , in one embodiment the social networking system  200  includes an externalization module  250  that allows third party systems external to the social networking system to query the social networking system for objects of interest, e.g., via a selector  219 . Thus, the use of selectors  219  (for example) need not be confined to the social networking system  200  itself; rather, any external web site can create a customized search interface that leverages the data of the social networking system. 
     For example, in one embodiment the externalization module  250  provides code that a third party can include on the third party&#39;s web page, the code causing creation of an iframe that loads a URL in the domain of the social networking system  200 . The URL itself can include information (e.g., in key-value pairs) that the social networking system  200  can use to determine what content to render in the iframe. For example, when rendering a selector  219  in an iframe, the URL for the iframe can include a selector identifier that tells the social networking system  200  which particular selector to display, and the social network system can also learn the object type associated with the selector by tracking the object types chosen via the selector having that identifier. Since the iframe is in the domain of the social networking system  200 , the social networking system has access to the cookies of the user of the social networking system, e.g., for obtaining information such as username. Thus, the social networking system can optionally access the user&#39;s connections from the graph information store  220  and use them to modify the results of queries entered via the selector, as described above. Referring to  FIG. 1A , the selector  105  used to search for Toy objects could be implemented as an iframe loading content from the domain of the social networking system  200  and embedded in the web page of an external third party web site focusing on toy sales, for example. In this example, the iframe might be specified by HTML code such as &lt;iframesrc=“http://www.socialnet.com/objquery/id=1383922”&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;, specifying that the selector with ID 1383922 from the social network at www.socialnet.com should be displayed. 
     The externalization module  250  may be implemented in other ways in other embodiments, such as a web services-based API that explicitly makes calls to the social network system  200  for data matching certain criteria, such as objects with given name prefixes and given object types. 
     Application: Field Selection and Learning 
     Pages  215  may have associated fields  225 , i.e., discrete portions of data describing aspects of the given page, such as an “hours” field specifying the hours of operation of a business page, or a “menu” field specifying the food served by the restaurant that is the subject of a restaurant page. In one embodiment, each of the various possible fields is represented as an object  225  in the object store  210 , rather than merely as a snippet of text or other primitive data type, and is thus referred to hereafter as a field object  225 . Each field object  225  has a corresponding field type  303  in the type graph  221 , such as the “Map,” “Hours,” “Telephone,” or “Menu” fields depicted in  FIG. 3 , and can have one or more values representing the data for that field type (e.g., the text “555-555-1234” for the “Telephone” field type). 
     The social networking system  200  can provide a page administrator user interface that allows an administrator of the different pages  215  for an entity on the social networking system to specify the field objects  225  or other information that should be on each page. Selectors  219  provide an administrator with one way to quickly specify relevant types of field objects  225  to be added to a page. 
     For example,  FIG. 6  illustrates a sample page administrator user interface  600  for a fictional bookstore, “Lib books.” A user has typed the character ‘m’ into a selector  605  with a context having a primary (or only) associated type of “field.” Accordingly, the selector  605  has displayed a result set  606  of Field objects  303  stored in the type graph  221  that match the entered character ‘m’ (namely, a “Maps” field for providing the user with a map to a location, a “Music list” field for listing music genres, and a “Menu” field for listing types of food), filtering out (or assigning a low rank to) objects other than field types  303 . The administrator can then select applicable types of field objects  225  to add (e.g., a Maps field) to the administrator&#39;s pages on the social networking system  200 . 
     In one embodiment, the social networking system  200  additionally comprises a field learning module  265  that identifies the field types  303  selected by administrators for their pages  215  (e.g., via selectors  119 ) and forms associations between those field types and pages. Specifically, the social networking system  200  comprises a set of Page-Field associations  224  in the graph information store  220 , each such association relating a particular page type  302  (e.g., a page of the Business type  305 ) to a particular field type  303  having at least some threshold degree of association with that page type and hence considered to be appropriate for that page type. In one embodiment, the field learning module  265  notes every time that an administrator adds a particular field type  303  to a page of a type not already associated with that field type in the Page-Field associations  224 . Then, after the field type has been added to that page type a sufficient number of times (e.g., a minimum number, or a minimum percentage of the total pages of that type) to establish a threshold degree of association, the field learning module  265  associates that field type  303  with that page type  302  in the Page-Field associations  244 . 
     For example, assume that when the Business page type  305  is first created it has no association with the Telephone field type  306  representing a telephone number of the business. However, after a number of administrators have added the Telephone field type  306  to pages of type Business (or to its subtypes, such as Restaurant), the field learning module  265  creates the association  306 A between the Business page type  305  and the Telephone field type  306 . 
     The social networking system  200  can then apply the Page-Field associations  224  to provide more useful options to administrators, including initiating an addition of a field of an appropriate field type to a page not already having a field of that field type. In one embodiment, the selectors  219  with the field type  303  in their contexts can adjust the rankings of the results based upon which field types are associated with the page type in which the selectors are embedded. Specifically, the field types  303  that are associated with the type of the page to which the selector  219  corresponds can have their rankings increased, and the field types that are not associated with that page type can have their ranking decreased. For example, the Map field type in the search result  606  of  FIG. 6  could be ranked more highly than the Music list field type or the Menu field type because Map is a known field type of the Business page type  305  of  FIG. 3 , and the other two fields are not. 
     In one embodiment, the social networking system  200  can proactively suggest to an administrator of a page that the administrator add particular fields that the Page-Field associations  224  list as being associated with pages of the given page type. For example, in  FIG. 6 , the user interface  600  provides links  610  suggesting that the administrator add a phone number field and/or business hours field to the pages for the “Lib books” business, since “Telephone” and “Hours” are field types known to be associated with pages of the Business type, as illustrated in the sample of  FIG. 3 . 
     Alternatively, the social networking system  200  can automatically add such fields, without requiring user permission. In one embodiment, an instance of a field type is automatically added to a page where the association between the field type and the type of the page has at least some threshold degree of strength greater than that required to create an association between a page type and a field type in the Page-Field associations  224 . For example, in one embodiment the threshold degree of strength comprises some minimum number of pages of that page type (e.g., 1000) having an instance of that field, and some minimum percentage of pages of that page type (e.g., 90%) having an instance of that field. When a field instance (e.g., a telephone number field) is automatically added to a page, the social networking system  200  may then request the page administrator to specify a value for the instance (e.g., a valid telephone number). 
     The foregoing description of the embodiments of the invention has been presented for the purpose of illustration; it is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Persons skilled in the relevant art can appreciate that many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above disclosure. 
     Some portions of this description describe the embodiments of the invention in terms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on information. These algorithmic descriptions and representations are commonly used by those skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance of their work effectively to others skilled in the art. These operations, while described functionally, computationally, or logically, are understood to be implemented by computer programs or equivalent electrical circuits, microcode, or the like. Furthermore, it has also proven convenient at times, to refer to these arrangements of operations as modules, without loss of generality. The described operations and their associated modules may be embodied in software, firmware, hardware, or any combinations thereof. 
     Any of the steps, operations, or processes described herein may be performed or implemented with one or more hardware or software modules, alone or in combination with other devices. In one embodiment, a software module is implemented with a computer program product comprising a computer-readable medium containing computer program code, which can be executed by a computer processor for performing any or all of the steps, operations, or processes described. 
     Embodiments of the invention may also relate to an apparatus for performing the operations herein. This apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, and/or it may comprise a general-purpose computing device selectively activated or reconfigured by a computer program stored in the computer. Such a computer program may be stored in a non-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium, or any type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions, which may be coupled to a computer system bus. Furthermore, any computing systems referred to in the specification may include a single processor or may be architectures employing multiple processor designs for increased computing capability. 
     Embodiments of the invention may also relate to a product that is produced by a computing process described herein. Such a product may comprise information resulting from a computing process, where the information is stored on a non-transitory, tangible computer readable storage medium and may include any embodiment of a computer program product or other data combination described herein. 
     Finally, the language used in the specification has been principally selected for readability and instructional purposes, and it may not have been selected to delineate or circumscribe the inventive subject matter. It is therefore intended that the scope of the invention be limited not by this detailed description, but rather by any claims that issue on an application based hereon. Accordingly, the disclosure of the embodiments of the invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims.