Abstract: A composer interface allows a user to provide input, such as text data, to the social networking system. Based on context information associated with the user and received input, the social networking system presents candidate data items to the user. Selecting a candidate data item allows the user to include the candidate data item in the input. Examples of context information include: users connected to the user, profile information associated with the user, and geographic information associated with the user. The candidate data items may be presented based on the probability of the user selecting a candidate data item.

Abstract: A composer interface provided by a social networking system allows a user to provide input, such as text data, to the social networking system. The composer interface allows the user to identify an action and/or an object related to the input. An action is structured data describing a relationship between objects defined by the social networking system. Based on the action identified as related to the input, the social networking system stores an association between the received input and the identified action.

Abstract: A social networking system presents questions to a user on an interface associated with the social networking system to elicit information about the user that is missing from the user's profile or is otherwise outdated. The questions are selected based on a number of factors, such as the need for or value of the information item, probability of a response, or cost of collecting the information item. In presenting the selected question, the social networking system prompts a user for information about the user in a an interface associated with a page from the social networking system, an application external to the social networking system, or using a push notification or prompt. The questions may be formatted in various ways, such as an explicit question, confirmation, a selection of responses, or social context to encourage the user to respond to the question.

Abstract: A social networking system enables a third party application to request user data based on action types and aggregations of a user's data corresponding to an action type with respect to multiple objects. Users of the social networking system may provide privacy or accessibility of their information based on the action type associated with the information (e.g., a user may allow a particular application to access all actions of a certain type, regardless of the source of those actions). The third party application may use this accessed information to generate personalized content for a user based on aggregations of the user's data and then publish the personalized content back to the social networking system.

Abstract: Users in public forums often mention certain topics in the course of their discussions. Member's comments in messages to other members are analyzed to obtain terms that co-occur with topics. Frequencies of co-occurrence of a term with topics are normalized based on frequency of the term in a random sample of message. The terms are ranked by their normalized frequency of co-occurrence with a topic in messages. The top terms are selected based on their rank. Analysis of demographic information associated with members that mentioned top terms associated with a topic is displayed in graphical format that highlights the relationship between the age, gender, and usage of the top terms over time. The demographic information presented includes average age of members that mentioned a top term or their gender information within a selected time interval.

Abstract: A social networking system enables a third party application to request user data based on action types and aggregations of a user's data corresponding to an action type with respect to multiple objects. Users of the social networking system may provide privacy or accessibility of their information based on the action type associated with the information (e.g., a user may allow a particular application to access all actions of a certain type, regardless of the source of those actions). The third party application may use this accessed information to generate personalized content for a user based on aggregations of the user's data and then publish the personalized content back to the social networking system.

Abstract: A social networking system obtains specific structured data about a user via a composer interface having textual content with incomplete portions and input fields corresponding to the incomplete potions. The input fields map to data fields in the user's profile and are selected based on the social networking system's need for the information associated with the data fields.

Abstract: A research polling system obtains structured data from freeform text answers in a research poll. The system includes a database of objects that may represent answers to a research poll. The system presents a research poll to a user, where the research poll includes at least one freeform text field among the answers in the poll. A user answering the poll provides a partial user input to a research poll question in the text field. In response, the system searches for objects in the database that match the user's input, and optionally also based on the question. If one or more matching objects are found, the system presents the matching objects in a listing interface, from which the user may select an object for the answer to the poll question.

Abstract: A social networking system allows a user to insert media information into content posted by the user, where the media information identifies a media item that the user is consuming while composing the posted content. When a user of a social networking system composes content via a composer interface, the user may select an option on the composer interface to record audio using a microphone on the user's device. A media item is identified from the recorded audio and information about the identified media item is added to the user's posted content. The system may also update information about the identified media item and the composing user.

Abstract: Users in public forums often mention certain topics in the course of their discussions. Member's comments in messages to other members are analyzed to obtain terms that co-occur with topics. Frequencies of co-occurrence of a term with topics are normalized based on frequency of the term in a random sample of message. The terms are ranked by their normalized frequency of co-occurrence with a topic in messages. The top terms are selected based on their rank. Analysis of demographic information associated with members that mentioned top terms associated with a topic is displayed in graphical format that highlights the relationship between the age, gender, and usage of the top terms over time. The demographic information presented includes average age of members that mentioned a top term or their gender information within a selected time interval.

Abstract: A social networking system or other user registration site builds a log of exposures by users to advertisements outside of the user registration site to determine their effectiveness. For each user exposed to an advertisement, a log entry is created indicating that the user has been exposed to the advertisement. Tracking pixels are embedded into advertisements that, when accessed, enable the social networking system or user registration site to log access to the advertisement by the user. From the log files, the user registration site identifies exposed users and selects unexposed users with similar demographics and/or behavior information to generate a control group. The two groups can be surveyed about the advertisement to determine its effectiveness. The user exposure information also can be used to retarget advertisements, to measure advertising effectiveness on connections of exposed users, and to measure actions of exposed users.

Abstract: A social networking system includes a mechanism for generating nodes in the social graph corresponding to web content external to the social networking system. These nodes allow the social networking system to track user interactions within the social networking system about web content external to the social networking system. The web content markup language document(s) include one or more tags, which contain information for defining the node in the social networking system. Users may then interact with the node, and these interactions are tracked by the social networking system. From this, the social networking system generates analytics, which include historical data and user demographic and behavioral information, and which can be provided to the web content provider via the social networking system. A user interface within the social networking system can be used to provide access to the analytics.

Abstract: Methods and systems allow measurement of effectiveness of advertising campaigns based on online advertisements targeted towards specific sets of members. A set of members is allowed to see an advertisement whereas another set of members is withheld from seeing the advertisement under conditions similar to the first set. Test sets obtained from the two sets of members are polled with questions evaluating effectiveness of advertisement. The poll questions evaluate effectiveness based on factors including brand awareness, purchase intent, or brand favorability. Statistical analysis is performed to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of the advertisement by measuring the improvement in above factors as a result of showing the advertisement.

Abstract: Users in public forums often mention certain topics in the course of their discussions. Member's comments in messages to other members are analyzed to obtain terms that co-occur with topics. Frequencies of co-occurrence of a term with topics are normalized based on frequency of the term in a random sample of message. The terms are ranked by their normalized frequency of co-occurrence with a topic in messages. The top terms are selected based on their rank. Analysis of demographic information associated with members that mentioned top terms associated with a topic is displayed in graphical format that highlights the relationship between the age, gender, and usage of the top terms over time. The demographic information presented includes average age of members that mentioned a top term or their gender information within a selected time interval.

Abstract: Users in public forums often mention certain topics in the course of their discussions. Member's comments in messages to other members are analyzed to obtain terms that co-occur with topics. Frequencies of co-occurrence of a term with topics are normalized based on frequency of the term in a random sample of message. The terms are ranked by their normalized frequency of co-occurrence with a topic in messages. The top terms are selected based on their rank. Analysis of demographic information associated with members that mentioned top terms associated with a topic is displayed in graphical format that highlights the relationship between the age, gender, and usage of the top terms over time. The demographic information presented includes average age of members that mentioned a top term or their gender information within a selected time interval.