Microsoft Corporation
DETERMINATION OF SAME-GROUP CONNECTIVITY

Abstract:

Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for capturing teammate-connection information and leveraging this information to improve services of a social networking service. The teammates feature allows users to identify a subset of their connections as teammate connections, which are connections that work directly with the user as a manager, a peer (person reporting to the same manager as the user), or a direct report. The teammate-connection information is used for improving services and notifications, such as new-connection suggestions, construction of the user feed, group conversations and messaging, notification prioritization, etc. Unlike existing connection patterns, the teammate-connections information is structured data. The structured data provides a better understanding of the relationships among the users and allows optimization of the user experience. In one aspect, a method is presented to generate recommendations of possible teammates for users of the social networking service.