Patent US 8,799,296

Systems and methods in which a ranking engine, for example such an engine as is communicatively coupled to a search engine or social networking system, or is part of such a system, ranks social offerings for eventual display to a user, said social offerings being ranked according to eigenvalues of matrices associated with a social graph G of the user and the user's friends and other connections. In some instances, the social offerings may be divided into categories and ranks for the social offerings computed for each of the categories based on activities and communications of the user with friends and other connections for each category. The eigenvalues are used for ranking the social offerings based on actions of the user's friends and other connections with respect to the social offerings.