The present disclosure relates to content clustering. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to the clustering of content posts on a social network service.
On microblogging and social network services, users often provide a metadata tag or “tag” to messages. One common tag notation is with the ‘#’ character followed by a string of alpha-numeric characters. A tag allows grouping of similarly tagged messages and helps users of microblogging or social network services to find content of a given topic.
Tags are often used in un-curated discussions to help route users to interesting content. Since tags are usually not controlled by a moderator, sometimes different content subject matter may inadvertently be labeled with the same tag. For instance, especially for homonyms, the tag ‘#ram’ may be applied to posts by computer hardware enthusiast discussing the latest advances in computer memory. The same tag ‘#ram’ may also be applied to posts by users discussing how durable and powerful their trucks are.
Tags are also sometimes used in conjunction with content rankings. Users can often affirm posts. By affirming a post, the post may be ranked higher in content rankings. Additionally, tags themselves sometimes may be ranked higher compared to other tags based on affirmations. Content posters sometimes may try to take advantage of highly ranked tags to get more viewership. This incentive to get more content viewers can cause different content subject matter to be labeled with the same tag and may make it more difficult to route users to the content they wish to consume.