Abstract: Systems and methods for generating a viewer-specific visitor history for a location are provided. In particular, a visitor history for a particular viewer and location can indicate a total number of users who have visited the location and can specifically identify one or more of a set of users using a facepile. The set of specifically identified users can be those users that have an associative link with the viewer and that are also associated with at least one location signal for the given location and for which the particular viewer is a permitted viewer. Thus, location signals having varying scopes of visibility information can be aggregated across a plurality of different web-services to provide a single, unified visitor history for a particular location and viewer, all while respecting user-specified visibility information.

Abstract: Systems and methods for generating a viewer-specific visitor history for a location are provided. In particular, a visitor history for a particular viewer and location can indicate a total number of users who have visited the location and can specifically identify one or more of a set of users using a facepile. The set of specifically identified users can be those users that have an associative link with the viewer and that are also associated with at least one location signal for the given location and for which the particular viewer is a permitted viewer. Thus, location signals having varying scopes of visibility information can be aggregated across a plurality of different web-services to provide a single, unified visitor history for a particular location and viewer, all while respecting user-specified visibility information.

Abstract: Settlement transactions are processed on a distributed computer system. Settlement data describing a settlement request are received and stored in a settlement storage. The storage includes a request status field with a value describing the status of the settlement request. The settlement data are stored in a vendor file responsive to the value of the request status field. Data describing the vendor file are stored in a vendor file information storage. The vendor file information storage includes a file status field with a value describing the status of the vendor file. The vendor file is provided to a vendor for settlement processing responsive to the value of the file status field. The distributed computer system is able to detect and rectify errors in the distributed computer system by using the request status and file status fields, which allows the distributed computer system to be comprised of conventional computers.

Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates self-tuning traffic shaping without a central traffic manager. During operation, the system sends one or more requests from a client to a server over a specified period of time. Next, the system receives one or more responses to the requests from the server over the specified period of time. The system then determines a request-timeout percentage for the period of time. Finally, the system adjusts a rate at which requests are sent to the server based on the request-timeout percentage.