Patent Application
20200154178
A social networking service is a computer service that provides an online platform configured to allow people to build social networks or social relations with other people via a computer network such as the Internet. For example, a user can utilize a social networking service to broadcast posts via a social network account. Such posts can contain text, photos, videos, audios, or other suitable types of electronic messages. In response, other users of the social network service can repost, reply, comment, or perform other actions on the original posts. Such interactions can allow the users to share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
A social networking service typically provides various functionalities or features to facilitate communications with other users on a social network. For example, the social networking service can provide functionalities for a user to compose, edit, and publish various electronic messages or “posts” to a social network account. The social networking service can also provide functionalities to notify other users subscribing to the social network account of the user, and allow the other users to view, comment, repost, or like/dislike the published posts. In other examples, the social networking service can also provide functionalities for the user to view, browse, delete, edit, or perform other actions on posts previously composed and/or published by the same user.
When allowing the user to view previous posts, certain social networking services can provide functionalities to arrange the previous posts according in a temporal order linearly or overlaid as a “timeline” such that recent posts are shown before other less recent or “stale” posts. To browse the posts, the user can scroll through the timeline using mouse clicks, finger taps, or other suitable input mechanisms. The scrolling technique, however, can be inefficient and cumbersome when the user has hundreds or even thousands of posts on the timeline. The scrolling technique can also be imprecise because the user may skip a post of interest when fast scrolling through a large number of posts.
Several embodiments of the disclosed technology are directed to animation of posts on a timeline to enable ready and efficient viewing of the posts to a user. In certain embodiments, a social networking service can provide an interface element, such as a “play” button to a user. Upon receiving a user input actuating the play button, the social networking service can be configured to compile the posts on the timeline of the user into multiple frames, insert suitable animation transitions (e.g., fade in, fade out, etc.) between consecutive frames, and output data that represents the animated posts to the user via, for instance, a smartphone, tablet, or other suitable types of client device. The animated posts can include, for example, a slideshow or video of the multiple frames individually containing one or more of the posts of the user on the timeline.
Before compilation of the posts on the timeline, the social networking service can be configured to allow the user to select a subset of the posts on the timeline for the compilation based on certain criteria. For example, the social networking service can be configured to allow the user to select a date/time range of posts to be included in the animated posts. In other examples, the social networking service can also be configured to allow the user to select a subset of the posts based on one or more of a message type (e.g., original posts or response post), a message topic (e.g., weather, school, etc.), or content type (e.g., only textual content).
During compilation of the posts on the timeline, several embodiments of the disclosed technology can apply various processing operations to various types of content in the posts. For example, textual content in a post can be condensed to only show a beginning portion of a preset threshold number of characters or phrases. In another example, pictorial content may be processed with lossy compression to derive a thumbnail version of the pictorial content to be included in a frame instead of an original version of the pictorial content. In a further example, video content may be shortened and/or compressed to show a beginning portion or abbreviated version of a threshold duration (e.g., 10 seconds). In yet further examples, additional and/or different types of content may be filtered, converted, altered or otherwise modified suitably in order to derive a playable frame.
In accordance with embodiments of the disclosed technology, the social networking service can also be configured to provide navigational functionalities and/or interface elements during playback of the animated posts. In one implementation, the social networking service can be configured to provide one or more of a pause, resume, fast forward, rewind, or other suitable types of navigational functionalities. In other implementations, the social networking service can also be configured to provide editing functionalities during playback of the posts. For instance, the social networking service can be configured to provide functionalities and/or associated interface elements for modifying, deleting, reposting, or other suitable operations on the posts in the animation. In response to a user selection of such functionalities, the social networking service can be configured to re-compile, re-arrange, or otherwise re-generate at least a portion of the animated posts in the multiple frames immediately, upon receiving a “save” or “apply” command, or in other suitable manners. In further examples, the social networking service can be configured to provide a functionality and/or interface element to allow the user to cancel playback of the animation.
Several embodiments of the disclosed technology can thus provide an efficient technique for the user to browse through a large number of posts on the timeline without requiring the user to scroll through a large number of posts via multiple user inputs. Instead, with a single click, the user can be presented with an animation of the posts on the timeline. The animation automatically scrolls through the posts without further user input. During playback of the animation, when the user is presented with a desired post, the user can pause the playback and optionally perform deletion, modification, or other suitable actions on the post. As such, embodiments of the social networking service can provide enhanced user experience of the social networking service when communicating with other users on a social network. Embodiments of the disclosed technology can also improve operations of the client device. For instance, by reducing several scrolling requests from the client device to the social network and associated scrolling operations on the client device, compute usage of the client device and network bandwidth usage from the client device to the social network may be reduced.
Certain embodiments of computing systems, devices, components, modules, routines, and processes for animation of posts on user timelines in computing systems are described below. In the following description, specific details of components are included to provide a thorough understanding of certain embodiments of the disclosed technology. A person skilled in the relevant art can also understand that the disclosed technology may have additional embodiments or may be practiced without several of the details of the embodiments described below with reference to
As used herein, a “social network” generally refers to an online computer platform configured to allow user to build social relations with other users on the social network. Example social networks can include Google+®, Facebook®, Instagram®, Twitter®, Snapchat®, and Linkedin®. The online computer platform of a social network can provide various computing services or social networking services to facilitate the building of social relations. For example, a user of a social network can publish electronic messages known as “posts” on the social network to be broadcasted and/or viewed by other users of the social network. A post can contain various content types. For instance, a post can contain one or more of textual, pictorial, video, or other suitable types of content. In another example, the social networking services can also be configured to provide a “timeline” of a user that contains multiple posts of the user arranged temporally, hierarchically, or in other suitable orders.
When browse posts on a timeline, a user typically can scroll through the posts on the timeline using mouse clicks, finger taps, or other suitable input mechanisms. The scrolling technique, however, can be inefficient and cumbersome when the user has hundreds or even thousands of posts on the timeline. The scrolling technique can also be imprecise because the user may skip a post of interest when fast scrolling through the large number of posts.
Several embodiments of the disclosed technology are directed to a software video compiler configured to animate posts on a timeline to enable ready viewing of the posts to a user. In certain implementations, a social networking service can provide an interface element, such as a “play” button to a user. Upon receiving a user input actuating the play button, the social networking service can be configured to compile some or all the posts on the timeline of the user into one or more frames of a video by, for example, inserting suitable animation transitions (e.g., fade in, fade out, etc.) between consecutive frames. The video can then be presented to a user on a client device. As such, the posts on the timeline can be automatically presented on the client device to the user without additional input from the user to scroll through the timeline, as described in more detail below with reference to
The computer network 104 can include an intranet, a wide area network, the Internet, or other suitable types of network. In certain implementations, the computer network 104 can include one or more physical network devices that interconnect the client devices 102 and the computer servers 106. Examples of such physical network devices can include network routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, or other suitable network components operatively coupled in a hierarchical, flat, “mesh,” or other suitable topologies.
The client devices 102 can each include a computing device that facilitates corresponding users 101 to access social networking services provided by the servers 106 via the computer network 104. For example, in the illustrated embodiment, the client devices 102 individually include a desktop computer providing a user interface 107 for accessing the social networking services provided by the computer servers 106. In other embodiments, the client devices 102 can also include laptop computers, tablet computers, smartphones, or other suitable computing devices providing a webpage or other suitable types of user interface 107. Even though two users 101 are shown in
The computer servers 106 can include one or more physical servers, virtual machines, or other suitable computing facilities that are configured to provide various social networking services to the users 101 via the computer network 104. For example, as shown in
Upon completion of generating the post 116, the first user 101a can publish the generated post 116 to the social network by transmitting data representing the post 116 to the computer servers 106 via the computer network 104. In response to receiving the post 116, the computer servers 106 can be configured to associate the received post 116 with a user account of the first user 101a according to records of accounts 110 in the database 108 and store a copy of the received post 116 in a corresponding folder 114 of the first user 101a in the network storage 112. The computer servers 106 can also be configured to provide notification(s) 119 of the received post 116 to any other users 101 (e.g., the second user 101b) who subscribe or otherwise to receive posts 116 from the first user 101a. Upon receiving input from the second user 101b for viewing the post 116, the computer servers 106 can be configured to provide a copy of the post 116 to the second user 101b.
The computer servers 106 can also be configured to generate a timeline of the first user 101a by aggregating some or all posts 116 that have been received from the first user 101a. In one implementation, the timeline can include a corresponding interface element that lists all posts 116 of the first user 101a temporally or in other suitable orders. The computer serves 106 can further be configured to present the timeline to the first user 101a upon user request. In certain implementations, when browse through posts 116 on a timeline, the first user 101a may need to scroll through the posts 116 one by one on the timeline using mouse clicks, finger taps, or other suitable input mechanisms. The scrolling technique, however, can be inefficient and cumbersome when the first user 101a has hundreds or even thousands of posts on the timeline. The scrolling technique can also be imprecise because the first user 101a may skip a post 116 of interest when fast scrolling through the large number of posts 116.
In accordance with embodiments of the disclosed technology, the computer servers 106 can include a software video compiler 120 (shown in
Components within a system can take different forms within the system. As one example, a system comprising a first component, a second component and a third component can, without limitation, encompass a system that has the first component being a property in source code, the second component being a binary compiled library, and the third component being a thread created at runtime. The computer program, procedure, or process may be compiled into object, intermediate, or machine code and presented for execution by one or more processors of a personal computer, a network server, a laptop computer, a smartphone, and/or other suitable computing devices. Equally, components may include hardware circuitry.
A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that hardware may be considered fossilized software, and software may be considered liquefied hardware. As just one example, software instructions in a component may be burned to a Programmable Logic Array circuit or may be designed as a hardware circuit with appropriate integrated circuits. Equally, hardware may be emulated by software. Various implementations of source, intermediate, and/or object code and associated data may be stored in a computer memory that includes read-only memory, random-access memory, magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media, flash memory devices, and/or other suitable computer readable storage media excluding propagated signals.
As shown in
In accordance with aspects of the disclosed technology, upon receiving a user input (as indicated by the cursor) on the “Play” button 134, the user interface 107 (or other suitable components of the client device 102) can be configured to generate and transmit an animation command 121 to a software video compiler 120 provided by the computer servers 106 via the computer network 104. As described in more detail below, the software video compiler 120 can be configured to compile some or all of the posts 116 the first user 101a has published to the social network into a video or slideshow, and thus providing efficient browsing of the posts 116.
As shown in
The interface component 122 can be configured to communicate with the client device 102 via the computer network 104. For example, the interface component 122 can be configured to receive the animation command 121 and forward the animation command 121 to the compiler 124 for further processing. Also, the interface component 122 can be configured to transmit data representing, for instance, the timeline 109, posts 116, or other suitable information to the client device 102. The interface component 122 can include various suitable types of hardware/software elements such as a network interface card, a virtual router, etc.
The compiler 124 can be configured to compile some or all of the posts 116 by the first user 101a into a video or slideshow upon receiving the animation command 121. In certain embodiments, the compiler 124 can first identify any or all of the posts 116 to be included in the video, for instance, from the folder 114 corresponding to the first user 101a at the network storage 112. In certain implementations, the first user 101a can select a subset of the posts 116 for the compilation based on certain criteria. For example, the compiler 124 can be configured to allow the first user 101a to select a date/time range of posts 116 to be included in the video. In other examples, the compiler 124 can also be configured to allow the first user 101a to select a subset of the posts 116 based on one or more of a message type (e.g., original posts or response post), a message topic (e.g., weather, school, etc.), or content type (e.g., only textual content).
Once the posts 116 to be included are identified, the compiler 124 can be configured to convert data of the identified posts 116 into a suitable format of one or more frames of the video. Example formats can include Windows Media Video, MP4, AVI, etc. In certain implementations, the compiler 124 can also be configured to apply various processing operations to various types of content in the posts. For example, textual content in a post may be condensed to only show a beginning portion of a threshold number of characters. In another example, pictorial content may be processed with lossy compression to derive a thumbnail version of the pictorial content be included in a frame instead of an original version of the pictorial content. In further examples, video content may be shortened and/or compressed to show a beginning portion of a threshold duration (e.g., 10 seconds). In yet further examples, additional and/or different types of content may be filtered, converted, or otherwise altered suitably in order to derive a playable frame.
Once the frames are generated, the compiler 124 can be configured to optionally insert or add data representing transition between consecutive frames. Example transitions can include fade in, fade out, morph, etc. Optionally, the compiler 124 can also be configured to add data representing sound, commentary, or other suitable information to the video and/or adjusting one or more of a playback speed, transition event, or other control features.
Upon completion of compiling the video, as shown in
The user interface 107 can also playback the animation 128 frame by frame with optional transitions between consecutive frames 140. For instance, in the illustrated example, a first frame 140 can show two posts 116 (i.e., “Post 1” and “Post 2”) while a second frame 140′ can show one post 116 (i.e., “Post 3”). In other examples, each frame 140 can show three, four, or any other suitable numbers of posts 116.
During playback of the animation 128, the first user 101a can pause the playback by actuating the “Pause” button 135, as shown in
As shown in
Several embodiments of the disclosed technology can thus provide an efficient technique for the first user 101a to browse through a large number of posts 116 on the timeline 109 without requiring the first user 101a to scroll through the large number of posts 116 via multiple user inputs. Instead, with a single click on the “Play” button 134, the first user 101a can be presented with an animation 128 of the posts 116 on the timeline 109. The animation 128 automatically scrolls through the posts 116 without further user input. During playback of the animation, when the first user 101a is presented with a desired post, the first user 101a can also pause the playback and optionally perform deletion, modification, or other suitable actions on the post 116. As such, embodiments of the software video compiler 120 can provide enhanced user experience of the social networking service when communicating with other users 101 on the social network.
As shown in
Depending on the desired configuration, the processor 304 can be of any type including but not limited to a microprocessor (μP), a microcontroller (μC), a digital signal processor (DSP), or any combination thereof. The processor 304 can include one more levels of caching, such as a level-one cache 310 and a level-two cache 312, a processor core 314, and registers 316. An example processor core 314 can include an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), a floating-point unit (FPU), a digital signal processing core (DSP Core), or any combination thereof. An example memory controller 318 can also be used with processor 304, or in some implementations, memory controller 318 can be an internal part of processor 304.
Depending on the desired configuration, the system memory 306 can be of any type including but not limited to volatile memory (such as RAM), non-volatile memory (such as ROM, flash memory, etc.) or any combination thereof. The system memory 306 can include an operating system 320, one or more applications 322, and program data 324. This described basic configuration 302 is illustrated in
The computing device 300 can have additional features or functionality, and additional interfaces to facilitate communications between basic configuration 302 and any other devices and interfaces. For example, a bus/interface controller 330 can be used to facilitate communications between the basic configuration 302 and one or more data storage devices 332 via a storage interface bus 334. The data storage devices 332 can be removable storage devices 336, non-removable storage devices 338, or a combination thereof. Examples of removable storage and non-removable storage devices include magnetic disk devices such as flexible disk drives and hard-disk drives (HDD), optical disk drives such as compact disk (CD) drives or digital versatile disk (DVD) drives, solid state drives (SSD), and tape drives to name a few. Example computer storage media can include volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information, such as computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data. The term “computer readable storage media” or “computer readable storage device” excludes propagated signals and communication media.
The system memory 306, removable storage devices 336, and non-removable storage devices 338 are examples of computer readable storage media. Computer readable storage media include, but not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other media which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by computing device 300. Any such computer readable storage media can be a part of computing device 300. The term “computer readable storage medium” excludes propagated signals and communication media.
The computing device 300 can also include an interface bus 340 for facilitating communication from various interface devices (e.g., output devices 342, peripheral interfaces 344, and communication devices 346) to the basic configuration 302 via bus/interface controller 330. Example output devices 342 include a graphics processing unit 348 and an audio processing unit 350, which can be configured to communicate to various external devices such as a display or speakers via one or more A/V ports 352. Example peripheral interfaces 344 include a serial interface controller 354 or a parallel interface controller 356, which can be configured to communicate with external devices such as input devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse, pen, voice input device, touch input device, etc.) or other peripheral devices (e.g., printer, scanner, etc.) via one or more I/O ports 358. An example communication device 346 includes a network controller 360, which can be arranged to facilitate communications with one or more other computing devices 362 over a network communication link via one or more communication ports 364.
The network communication link can be one example of a communication media. Communication media can typically be embodied by computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, or other data in a modulated data signal, such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism, and can include any information delivery media. A “modulated data signal” can be a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media can include wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, radio frequency (RF), microwave, infrared (IR) and other wireless media. The term computer readable media as used herein can include both storage media and communication media.
The computing device 300 can be implemented as a portion of a small-form factor portable (or mobile) electronic device such as a cell phone, a personal data assistant (PDA), a personal media player device, a wireless web-watch device, a personal headset device, an application specific device, or a hybrid device that include any of the above functions. The computing device 300 can also be implemented as a personal computer including both laptop computer and non-laptop computer configurations.
From the foregoing, it will be appreciated that specific embodiments of the disclosure have been described herein for purposes of illustration, but that various modifications may be made without deviating from the disclosure. In addition, many of the elements of one embodiment may be combined with other embodiments in addition to or in lieu of the elements of the other embodiments. Accordingly, the technology is not limited except as by the appended claims.
