Patent ID: 8843573

Claim:
A method for comprising: receiving a poke message request at a social networking system from a user interface of a user device associated with a sender who is an employee, wherein the poke message request is to initiate a poke message from the sender to a recipient who is an employer of the employee, and the user interface is for initiating the poke message and is configured to: disallow manual addition of message content to the poke message, receive a selection of the recipient for the poke message, wherein the sender and recipient are users of a social networking system and have previously established a connection within the social networking system, receive a request to initiate the poke message from the sender to the selected recipient, and responsive to receiving the request to initiate the poke message, automatically determine location information for the sender and automatically send the poke message request that includes the location information to the social networking system; and; responsive to receiving the poke message request, obtaining a physical location of a device associated with the sender from the received location information in the poke message request; generating the poke message, the poke message comprising an indication that the sender initiated a poke message, the identification of the sender, and the obtained location of the device associated with the sender; transmitting the poke message to a user device associated with the recipient; storing information about the poke message by the social networking system, the stored information comprising an identity of the sender, an identity of the recipient, and the obtained location; and responsive to receiving an API request from a third party application, identifying a listing of records of previous poke messages between the sender and the recipient, each record comprising a time stamp and a location associated with the poke message, and providing the third party application with a portion of the listing of records, wherein the third party application is configured to generate a timecard report comprising information generated based on the sender's poke messages and one or more other users associated with the employer.