Abstract: Systems and methods for automatically targeting advertising on an online social network using affinity information collected concerning members of one or more online social networks in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. One embodiment of the invention includes a targeting server configured to obtain data from at least one server that forms part of an online social network, where the obtained data describes member profiles of members of the online social network and activities performed on the online social network associated with the member profiles. In addition, the targeting server is configured to detect affinities between a member profile and keywords based upon data describing activities associated with the member profile and to provide the targeting keywords to a server that is part of the online social network so that the online social network displays the specific offer to online social network members targeted using the targeting keywords.

Abstract: Systems and methods for automatically generating targeting information for presentation of an offer via an online social network using affinity information collected concerning members of online social networks in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed.

Abstract: Systems and methods for identifying and quantifying user activities within a social network and for generating affinity scores for activities that result in a desired outcome are described. One embodiment of the method of the invention includes receiving activity information at a server from user devices, building streams of activity information using the server, relating the streams of activity information to topic data using the server, assigning weights to specific types of activity information that are associated with an advertising campaign using the server, and calculating an affinity score with respect to the advertising campaign based upon the streams of activity information and the weights using the server.

Abstract: Systems and methods for retrieving social network messages and/or web pages in response to search queries are described. One embodiment of the invention includes generating a word list from at least a portion of the content of the web page using a web and message server system, generating an initial list of relevant terms based upon the word list using the web and message server system, identifying additional relevant terms using messages posted to at least one social network based upon the initial list of relevant terms, and creating an updated list of relevant terms by using the web and server system to combine terms in the initial list of relevant terms with the additional relevant terms identified using messages posted to at least one social network.

Abstract: Systems and methods of identifying and retrieving messages that satisfy a search query using the context of the message and term frequencies are provided. One embodiment includes identifying at least one category relevant to the search query, wherein a plurality of scored keywords are associated with each category, selecting at least one of the scored keywords that is relevant to an identified category, performing a plurality of searches of messages from a social networking messaging service to retrieve messages, where at least one search includes retrieving messages based on the original search query and one of the selected scored keywords, scoring the retrieved messages with respect to each of the at least one identified categories using at least the scored keywords relevant to each category, and returning at least the message with the highest score as the search result.

Abstract: Systems and methods of identifying and categorizing social network messages that are relevant to selected categories and text terms are provided. The frequency of text terms appearing in social network messages are calculated for multiple categories. Based on the calculated text term frequency, social network messages can be identified and/or categorized that match a provided set of text terms. Selecting and/or associating text terms and categories are determined by repeatedly analyzing social network messages.