User Trend Graph - RFC

In my websearch module of the important feature when a user logs in, is the ability to filter results based on their likes and activities. In this post, I'm drafting out the methodology called "User Trend Graph", built using the data from the Facebook Graph API (OpenGraph Protocal).

About User Trend Graph
User Trend Graph (now on called UGraph), is based on time, number and type of activities, the user likes on FB. The following graph depicts the UGraph:

Here a sample user's likes is being analyzed, thus his Product/Service category likes are more than Application likes. The data used here is a random. The graph line can be both increasing or decreasing, since the users can Like and Unlike pages on FB, as depicted above.

Over the period of time, user's trend can be calculated, projected and used in any social machine learning algorithms (is there any such?). This can act as a representational medium for the algorithm to act upon.

The time is calculated from the FB's JSON response (see here for a sample), as "created_time", which denotes the date and time when the user made a connection with that node in the graph (OpenGraph of FB).

UGraph, depicts the user's activities on the web at a social networking platform. If the same could be extended to a broader perspective on all web activities. Such as Google (or probably they're using a similar thing, already? No idea!), twitter, FB, etc. can all benefit in understanding their User's context and provide a better service to them.

Since many Web 2.0 services are going social the most profound method to analyze the user's interest and provide a higher degree of user relevance in the context of search engines, user suggestions, etc.

Using UGraph in iBlue
As i said before, we're implementing the concept of UGraph in our iBlue, as a proof of concept application.

Once the user's login with their FB Account, we cache their Likes JSON in our database (as we're hard pressed on resources to access them dynamically) until they login again, during which it is updated. Since the response is in reverse sorted order, one can use binary search technique to identify the previous latest node, delete them if not present (user would've disliked it), insert the remaining ones, updated "created_time" for the existing if they're changed meanwhile.

We use the "category" property as the series for each Like of the user. Then dynamically compute the graph, identify the current taste and trend of the user, and sort the results accordingly for the user to view.

Please provide your feedback on this implementation. If such a method exist please help me improve it, if not lets start using it.

Update: This is also Research Engine Update #6.

- Ashwanth Kumar