Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for visibility filtering. One of the methods includes receiving a request for particular data on a social messaging platform; passing the request to one or more services, wherein each service is configured to call to data sources or to additional services to collect the particular data according to a request path defined for a type of request; performing visibility filtering at each service upon obtaining responses to calls made by that service, wherein performing visibility filtering at a service comprises calling a local visibility library that evaluates one or more rules with respect to the obtained response data, and wherein the results of the visibility filtering are passed upstream along the request path until a last service obtains all filtered response data; and assembling a final response to the request based on the filtered response data.

Abstract: A system for real-time search, including: a set of partitions, each including a set of segments, each segment corresponding to a time slice of messages posted to the messaging platform, and a real-time search engine configured to receive a search term in parallel with other partitions in the set of partitions, and search at least one of the set of segments in reverse chronological order of the corresponding time slice to identify document identifiers of messages containing the search term; and a search fanout module configured to: receive a search query including the search term; send the search term to each of the set of partitions for parallel searching; and return, in response to the search query, at least one of the identified document identifiers of messages containing the search term.

Abstract: A real time messaging platform identifies an audio snippet of a time-based media (TBM) event. The messaging platform maintains a real time repository of concurrently broadcasting TBM events as well as a historical repository of previously broadcast TBM events. These repositories contain acoustic fingerprints of their respective TBM events. The messaging platform matches an acoustic fingerprint of the audio snippet with one of the stored acoustic fingerprints to identify the TBM event in the recorded snippet. To identify the TBM event, the messaging platform matches multiple overlapping reference audio segments of the reference audio stream with multiple test audio segments of the audio snippet. This allows the platform to account for time delays between the test and reference audio segments that would otherwise hinder the matching process.

Abstract: This description relates to techniques for authenticating an application through generation of a dynamic application-specific token. A client application executing on a client device receives a request from a server for a token. The client application accesses a resource file or portion thereof that is accessible to both the client application and authenticator and is known to be accessible to the client application by the authenticator in response to the request for the token and extracts a copy of the resource file or the portion. A token is generated based on the extracted copy and additional information factors if any, some of which may be random or pseudo-random. The token is transmitted to the server for authentication.

Abstract: A method for conversion attribution. The method includes obtaining a first identifier associated with a first device, obtaining a second identifier associated with a second device, bridging the first identifier and the second identifier based on a determination, made by a probabilistic classifier, that the first identifier and the second identifier are associated with a common user, and attributing, using the bridge, a conversion on a website accessed using the second device.

Abstract: In general, techniques are described to determine engagement scores representative of a level of engagement in a digital domain for a particular sub-category within the common category of entities on a social media platform. In accordance with these techniques, a computing system is configured to receive, from one or more client devices, messages composed by one or more users of the one or more client devices. Each of the messages includes a respective identifier, and each respective identifier is associated with a common category of entities. The computing system is further configured to determine, based on the messages, an engagement score that represents a level of engagement for a particular sub-category within the common category of entities. The computing system is further configured to output, for display at a display device operatively connected to the computing system, a visual representation of the engagement score.

Abstract: A technique for tracking conversion of an online offer includes tracking online and/or offline transactions. A customer accepts an offer provided by a merchant and submits his or her account information so that he or she may receive a reward for satisfying criteria associated with the offer. Transactions of the merchant are then monitored at the payment processor level to determine whether the customer satisfies the purchase criteria. Therefore, online and offline conversion can both be tracked. Further, the merchant is able to determine the overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns by analyzing the number of offers that are both accepted and satisfied.

Abstract: Embodiments are provided for managing shared states of objects associated with a distributed database. According to certain aspects, a reactor machine interfaces with a coordination service that is in communication with the distributed database to coordinate the shared states of the objects. The coordination service notifies the reactor machine when a shared state of an object has changed and, in response, the reactor machine determines a desired state of the object by executing a reactor function. The reactor machine provides the desired state of the object to the coordination service, and the coordination service updates the shared state of the object to reflect the desired state of the object. Accordingly, the logic of the reactor machine is de-coupled from the complexities of the coordination service.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for data stream processing. One method performed by a stream manager in a group of containers including streaming processes and stream managers includes receiving a first data streaming object of the data streaming objects from a first component in the group of containers; determining whether to process the first data streaming object; in response to determining to process the first data streaming object processing the first data streaming object and routing the first data streaming object; and in response to determining not to process the first data streaming object, routing the first data streaming object.

Abstract: In one general aspect, a method can include receiving a video loop portion included in a video file and receiving an audio loop portion included in an audio file. The method can include analyzing at least a portion of the audio file based on a musical characteristic and identifying a plurality of segment locations within the audio file based on the analyzing where the plurality of segment locations define a plurality of audio segments of the audio file. The method can also include modifying the video loop portion based on one of the plurality of segment locations in the audio file.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage medium, for indexing data in information retrieval systems. In one aspect, a system includes computer readable storage media, where the non-transitory computer readable storage media include postings lists for a term, where each posting list includes postings blocks, position blocks, and metadata blocks. Each postings block includes document identifiers and respective indications of frequency of the term in each document. Each position block includes position indications for the term in the documents of a corresponding postings block. Each metadata block includes an indication of the size of the document identifiers in the associated postings block, an indication of the size of the indications of frequency of terms in the associated postings block, an indication of a number of postings in the associated postings block, and an indication of position information for postings in the associated postings block.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for delivering event content. One of the methods includes initiating, for one or more client devices, a subscription to a topic; receiving an event relevant to a topic; determining a number of channel servers that correspond to the topic, wherein each channel server is associated with one or more client devices; determining that the number of channel servers that correspond to the topic is greater than a threshold number of channel servers; writing the received event from the event processor to an event fan-out queue, in response to the determination that the number of channel servers that correspond to the topic is greater than the threshold number of channel servers; reading the received event from the event fan-out queue; and sending the received event to the one or more client devices associated with each respective channel server.

Abstract: A real-time messaging platform and method are disclosed which can be used to promote content in the messaging platform. In one embodiment, the promotion system is disclosed which performs initial candidate selection so as to narrow down the set of candidate promotions before applying more expensive processing. The candidate selection takes advantage of the connection graph information associated with accounts in the messaging platform to identify targeted accounts. In another embodiment, the promotion system uses a prediction model to predict a user's engagement with the promotion and utilizes the prediction to assist in ranking the candidate promotions. Promotions can be assigned metrics based, for example, on a weighted combination of user engagement rates, decayed with time to reflect an intuition that recent interactions by one or more users with the promotion will have a greater impact than older interactions with the promotion.

Abstract: Systems and methods for determining items in a target domain to recommend to a user whom has not previously interacted with items in the target domain is described. The method comprises generating an auxiliary domain user embedding based on user affinities for each of a plurality of items in an auxiliary domain and embeddings for each of the plurality of items in the auxiliary domain, providing the auxiliary domain user embedding as input to a neural network configured to output a target domain user embedding, predicting target domain user affinities for items in the target domain based, at least in part, on a similarity measure between the target domain user embedding and an embedding for at least one item in the target domain, and determining a set of items in the target domain to recommend to the user based, at least in part, on the predicted target domain user affinities.

Abstract: A system and a method are disclosed for recommending electronic messages in a message sharing system. Users can post messages to the message sharing system. These messages from posting users are received by the system and sent to receiving users that have subscribed to the posting users. The receiving users interact with the messages in various ways, such as by sharing the messages with other users. Interaction information is received for each of the electronic messages. The interaction information includes an indication of the number of interactions with the electronic message by receiving users. A score is determined for each electronic message based on the interaction information. Electronic messages are selected for being recommended to a user or a group of users based on the scores. The recommendations are then sent to the users, enabling users to better focus their attention on messages that are likely to be interesting.

Abstract: A software developer tool allows for live code updates (LCU) while an application is running using an execution platform. The LCU update service operates by preemptively, automatically rewriting bytecode to introduce a layer of indirection that swaps out the code of a running application to make it easy to dynamically update whenever the code is changed. The indirection includes both new “representation” classes (and constituent fields and methods), and also replacing constructs that are hard-coded into the bytecode with more flexible constructs such as representation object maps and a dynamic global class table. All manner of code modifications are handled including adding, removing and modifying fields and methods of classes, and changing the class hierarchy. This includes arbitrary code changes, ensuring that when a developer changes a class, all objects of or related to that class are instantly updated.

Abstract: A messaging system provides recommendations of content that account holders of the messaging system might be interested in engaging with. In order to determine what to recommend, the messaging system generates a model of account holder engagement behavior organized by type of engagement. The model parameters are trained on differences between expected engagement behavior based on past data and actual engagement behavior, and include a set of common factor matrices that are trained using data from more than on engagement type. As a consequence, engagement behavior of other account holders with respect to other types of engagements different than the one sought to be recommended serves as a partial basis for determining what engagements of the sought-after type are recommended.

Abstract: Embodiments are provided for reducing unwanted messages or spam within a real-time social networking service. According to certain aspects, a synchronous analysis module may operate in coordination with an asynchronous analysis module. Each of the synchronous analysis module and the asynchronous analysis module analyzes an incoming message from a user account to determine whether the incoming message has characteristics of spam, whereby the synchronous analysis is at a lower latency than the asynchronous analysis. The asynchronous analysis is afforded the ability to identify certain spam characteristics that the synchronous analysis may identify during its lower latency analysis.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for providing content on a social messaging platform. One of the methods includes providing a plurality of messages of a social messaging platform to a user device, the plurality of messages being part of a conversation; receiving a request associated with one of the plurality of messages, the request including an indication to repost a collection of messages; providing a selection user interface, the selection user interface including the plurality of messages and a respective selection indicator for each message; receiving a user selection of two or more messages; responsive to the user selection, generating a message composition interface, the message composition interface including a representation of the selected messages; and in response to user input, posting the representation of the selected messages as part of a new message of the user on the platform.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for generating avatars based on physical sensor measurements. One of the methods includes receiving, by a second user device from a video streaming platform system during a video streaming session between a first user device and the second user device, an updated physical sensor measurement of the first user device. An updated graphical representation of an avatar selected by a first user of the first user device is generated by the second user device based on the updated physical sensor measurement of the first user device. The updated graphical representation of the avatar is presented by the second user device on a display device of the second user device during a video streaming session between the first user device and the second user device.