BACKGROUND

This invention relates generally to social networking, and more specifically to using the data contained within a social network to target items to a social networking system user based on a predicted event associated with the user.

Social networks, or social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become prevalent in recent years. In particular, social networking systems allow users to share public and private information with other users, including information about significant events in the users' lives. These significant events may include changes in marital status, birthdays, new jobs, the birth of new children, graduation, or death, just to name a few. One way for users to share such event information is to add or update the information on their user profile. A user profile contains user provided information such as marital status, birthday, graduation date, and/or other user-specific data. Other users can then review the shared information by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data.

Social networking systems typically use the user-provided profile information to present additional information that may be relevant to the users. For example, information related to an entry level job placement may not be generally relevant to most users of the social networking system; however, the information is likely more relevant to a recent college or high school graduate. Thus users of the social networking system, or external parties such as advertisers use user profile information to target their message to an audience believed to be more receptive to the content of the message.

Advertisers in particular have attempted to leverage the profile information provided by users by targeting their ads to users whose interests best align with the products or services being advertised. For example, an advertiser using a social networking system may display banner ads for wedding locations to users who have updated their profile to indicate a change in marital status. However, targeting advertising to users is not very effective when the users' profiles are inaccurate or incomplete, which may occur because the profile information is supplied by the user and not verified for accuracy. Thus, in the above example, an advertiser may send promotional material or advertisements to a user who is married, but nonetheless has not reported as being married within the social networking system.

Even if a user profile is accurate, relevant advertisements often reach the intended recipient too late. Users of a social networking system generally do not update their profile information to reflect an event until after the event has occurred. Thus, in the above example, a user who got married may not update the new marital status on the social networking system until after the marriage. Consequently, an advertiser seeking to promote a wedding venue and relying on a user profile update will not reach the user until after the user likely has no need for a wedding venue.

An advertiser may try to predict that a user will get married at a future time if the user's profile indicates that the user is engaged. However, this system of prediction is unreliable because, as stated above, users do not update their profile very frequently and the profile information may not be accurate. Thus an advertiser could spend money to reach a user on a social networking system without reaching its target audience.

A social networking system and its users also rely on user provided profile information to communicate and interact with each user. A social networking system often uses user profile information to suggest friends or groups that may be of particular interest to each user. However, a social networking system and its users face problems similar to those outlined above, such as timeliness and accuracy of user provided profile information. Certain information is time sensitive and relevant only before a particular event occurs. Since users typically do not update their profile information until after an event has occurred, social networking systems relying on a profile update to provide such time sensitive information are bound to deliver the information too late. Similarly, user provided profile information may be inaccurate, resulting in inaccurate or irrelevant information suggestions.

SUMMARY

To provide content to a user of the social networking system more effectively, and in a more timely fashion, it may be desirable to predict the user's needs or an upcoming change in the user's needs in a more accurate manner. Rather than merely relying on a user's timeliness and accuracy in updating his or her profile information, embodiments of the invention predict events associated with a user based on information available about the user and accessible by the social networking system. An event, for example, may be a change in marital status, a birthday, a new job, a birth of a child, a graduation, or a death of a person associated with the user, just to name a few. Beyond simple reliance on a change in user profile information, the described approach is better able to use all the information contained in the social networking system such as wall posts, instant messages, e-mail messages, etc., to determine whether a user has experienced such an event and/or to predict whether a user has an upcoming event in the future.

Predicting an event associated with a user may allow the social networking system to provide content to the user. Content may include information such an advertisement or a gift such as a service or a good, including virtual goods and real goods that may be available for free or for purchase. In one embodiment, the content is selected based on user's activity within the social networking system, such as the users' bookmarks, items in the user's wish-list or shopping cart etc. Additionally, the selected content may be displayed to friends of the users within the social networking system wherein the friends can send the content to the user. For example, the user's friend may send a virtual good available for free to the user within the social networking system. In another embodiment, the user's friend may purchase a displayed item as a gift for the user, wherein the purchased gift item may be sent to the user.

The features and advantages described in this summary and the following detailed description are not all-inclusive. Many additional features and advantages will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the drawings, specification, and claims hereof.

