Complimenting a user's experience in a social networking

Abstract

A user profile for a user of a social networking system may include experiences, such as work, educational, travel, and interests. The social networking system provides a profile page for a user's user profile that allows users to compliment the user on the experience. If a user wants to compliment another user on an experience not present on that user's user profile, the user can add the experience along with the compliment. Complimenting users on their experiences allows a reputation ranking to be created based on compliments received in a particular domain, which are searchable by user of the social networking system. The compliments may be used by the social networking system to build a domain-based reputation ranking of users of a social networking system.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method comprising:
 maintaining, by a social networking system, a user profile for a first user of the social networking system, wherein the user profile of the first user is associated with one or more user experiences of the first user;   providing, by the social networking system, a profile page of the first user, the profile page including an itemized list of the one or more user experiences associated with the user profile of the first user, wherein an item in the itemized list of user experiences comprises a caption summarizing an activity, interest, or accomplishment of the first user;   providing, by the social networking system, an experience control on the profile page of the first user for a second user of the social networking system to add an additional user experience to the itemized list of the first user that is not in the itemized list;   receiving from the second user, via the experience control on the interface, an additional user experience for the first user; and   adding, by the social networking system, the additional user experience to the itemized list of user experiences on the first user's user profile.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising notifying one or more connections of first user that the additional user experience was added to the first user's user profile. 
     
     
         3 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 2 , wherein the notifying comprises displaying a story in a newsfeed presented to the one or more connections, the story including a description of the additional user experience and an identification of the first and second users. 
     
     
         4 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein the user profile of the first user is associated with one or more nodes corresponding to the one or more user experiences of the first user. 
     
     
         5 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising, responsive to receiving the additional user experience from the second user:
 associating, by the social networking system, an additional node corresponding to the additional user experience with the user profile of the first user; and   storing attribution information in conjunction with the additional node, the attribution information indicating that the second user caused the additional user experience to be added to the first user's user profile.   
     
     
         6 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising providing a compliment control on the profile page of the first user, for a social networking system user to compliment the first user on one or more of the user experiences displayed in the itemized list on the first user's user profile, by enabling the social networking system user to provide descriptive statements elaborating on items in the itemized list. 
     
     
         7 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 6 , further comprising, responsive to receiving, via the compliment control, from a given social networking system user, a compliment elaborating on a given user experience in the itemized list of experiences of the first user's user profile, notifying one or more connections of first user that the compliment was added to the first user's user profile. 
     
     
         8 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 7 , wherein the notifying comprises displaying a story in a newsfeed presented to the one or more connections, the story including a description of the compliment, the given user experience that was elaborated on, and an identification of the first user and the given social networking system user who provided the compliment. 
     
     
         9 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 6 , further comprising:
 responsive to receiving, from a given social networking system user, via the compliment control, a compliment elaborating on a given user experience in the itemized list of experiences of the first user's user profile, determining a sentiment associated with the compliment by analyzing the content of the compliment; and   if the determined sentiment associated with the received compliment is negative, providing the first user a notification flagging that the received compliment was negative and a prompt requesting authorization that the received compliment be added to the first user's user profile.   
     
     
         10 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein the additional user experience further comprises a tag referencing a third user sharing a connection in the social networking system with the first or the second user. 
     
     
         11 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 associating, by the social networking system, the additional user experience with a relationship type between the first user and the second user, wherein the relationship type between the first user and the second user in context with the additional user experience is provided by the second user.   
     
     
         12 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 11 , further comprising:
 providing, by the social networking system, to the second user, a list of relationship types from which to select a relationship type in conjunction with the additional user experience;   receiving a selection of a particular relationship type by the second user from the list of relationship types to associate with the additional user experience; and   associating, by the social networking system, the relationship type between the first user and the second user in conjunction with the additional user experience.   
     
     
         13 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 11 , further comprising:
 maintaining relationship information between the first and second users; and   automatically associating, by the social networking system, the relationship type with the additional user experience based on the relationship information between the first and second users.   
     
     
         14 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 6 , further comprising:
 receiving, from the second user, via the compliment control, a descriptive compliment elaborating on the additional user experience; and   providing, by the social networking system, a notification to the first user that the first user was complimented on the additional user experience and that the additional user experience and the descriptive compliment were added to the first user's user profile.   
     
     
         15 . A computer-implemented method for determining a reputation ranking, comprising:
 maintaining, by a social networking system, a user profile for each of a plurality of users of a social networking system, the user profile including compliments associated with user experiences;   receiving, by the social networking system, one or more compliments from other users of the social networking system about a first user in context with a selected one of the user experiences on the first user's user profile; and   determining, by the social networking system, a reputation ranking for the first user based at least in part on the one or more compliments received about the first user for the selected user experience, wherein the reputation ranking is specific to a particular domain associated with the selected user experience, the particular domain representing a class of user experiences that share a similar characteristic.   
     
     
         16 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , further comprising:
 in response to receiving a new compliment associated with the selected experience within the particular domain from a second user about the first user, increasing the reputation ranking for the first user in the particular domain by an amount that varies based on a reputation ranking of the second user in the particular domain.   
     
     
         17 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , wherein the particular domain categorizes the selected user experience into a class of experiences selected from the group consisting of: work experiences, educational experiences, activity experiences, and interest experiences. 
     
     
         18 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , wherein:
 the particular domain encompasses one or more sub-domains of user experiences, each sub-domain corresponding to a sub-class of user experiences related in a nested hierarchy to the class of experiences of the particular domain; and   the method further comprising determining a separate reputation ranking for the first user for each sub-domain of the one or more sub-domains corresponding to which the first user has received a compliment.   
     
     
         19 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , further comprising:
 receiving a question from the first user requesting information specific to a user experience;   analyzing terms in the question to identify a given domain that encompasses the user experience;   determining, by the social networking system, a list of connections of the first user having experiences within the given domain; and   targeting the question to a subset of connections from the list of connections based on their reputation rankings in the given domain.   
     
     
         20 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , further comprising:
 providing, by the social networking system, an interface for the first user to search for, sort, or filter the first user's connections based on reputation rankings within a user-specified domain.   
     
     
         21 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 15 , further comprising:
 retrieving, by the social networking system, a plurality of content items for display to the first user, each content item corresponding to another social networking system user sharing a connection with the first user;   identifying a respective content item associated with a second user, the respective content item of the plurality of content items including terms indicative of a respective user experience of the second user;   determining a respective reputation ranking of the second user within a domain encompassing the respective user experience; and   boosting the respective content item relative to other content items of the plurality of content items by an amount dependent on the respective reputation ranking of the second user.