Personalizing an application with content from a social networking system

Abstract

A third-party application running on a client device sends a request for a user's profile information to a local social networking application running on the client device. The local social networking application sends to the request to the social networking system, receives the requested information from the social networking systems, and provides the requested information to the third-party application. The third-party application uses at least a portion of the requested information to personalize its content for the user. In this way, the third-party application has a simple mechanism for incorporating personalized content for the user based on social information, without requiring the third-party application itself to maintain or even have access to the user's social information.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method comprising:
 sending, by a first application running on a device, a request to an online system for content of a user of the device, the request originating from a third-party application running on the device, the first application being associated with the online system;   receiving, by the first application, the requested content from the online system; and   providing, by the first application to the third-party application, the requested content.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the request for content includes a request for the user's friend's list. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the request for content includes a request for the user's notifications. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the request for content includes a request for messages sent to the user. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the request for content includes a request for information about activities of the user's friends. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 5 , wherein the activities relate to the third-party application. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving, by the first application, content from the third-party application running on the device; and   sending, by the first application, the content to the online system.   
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the third-party application is configured to use at least a portion of the requested content to personalize its application content for the user. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the request for content includes criteria to filter the requested content. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 obtaining a user identifier uniquely identifying the user; and   sending, by the first application, the user identifier with the request to the online system.   
     
     
         11 . A method comprising:
 receiving, at an online system, a request for content of a user, the request received from a first application running on a device operated by the user and made responsive to a third-party application running on the device;   determining whether to provide the requested content;   retrieving the requested content;   sending, by the online system, the requested content to the first application, wherein the first application provides the requested content to the third-party application.   
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein determining whether to provide the requested content includes determining whether privacy settings of user allows the third-party application access to the requested content. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 12 , wherein the user's privacy settings allows the third-party application to access a subset of the requested information. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein the request for content includes a request for content associated with friends of the user, and wherein determining whether to provide the requested content includes determining whether privacy settings of the user and privacy settings of the friends of the user allow the third-party application access to the requested content. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein the request for content includes filter criteria and wherein the requested content is filtered by the filter criteria. 
     
     
         16 . A method comprising:
 sending, by a third-party application running on a device, a first request to a first application on the device for content of a user of the device;   receiving, by the third-party application, an access token from the first application;   sending, by the third-party application, a second request for content including the access token to an online system;   receiving, by the third-party application, the requested content from the online system.   
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 16 , wherein the first request includes a request for user identification information uniquely identifying the user of the device.