Location-based place determination using online social networks

摘要

In one embodiment, one or more computing devices of an online social network, receives, from a mobile-client system, geographic-location information associated with the mobile-client system. The one or more computing devices identify multiple candidate place-entities associated with the online social network that correspond to the geographic-location information, where each candidate place-entity is associated with a particular geographic location. The method also includes determining, for each candidate place-entity, a confidence score based on the geographic-location information associated with the mobile-client system, where the confidence score represents a probability that the first user is located at the candidate place-entity. A location-probability distribution associated with the candidate place-entity can also be used to calculate the confidence score. The one or more computing devices send, to the mobile-client system, information associated with one or more of the candidate place-entities based on their respective confidence scores.