Accounting for user interaction with a social networking system when notifying the user of content provided to a group maintained by the social networking system including that user

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• store information in a social networking system describing one or more groups, each group including one or more users of the social networking system;
• receive content items provided by users to one or more of the groups;
• maintain information at the social networking system describing interactions with the social networking system by a user, the information identifying times when the user performed one or more interactions with the social networking system;
• determine a time period when the user most frequently interacts with the social networking system based on the maintained information identifying times when the user performed one or more interactions with the social networking system;
• identify content items provided by users to one or more groups that include the user;
• determine amounts of interaction by users of the social networking system with the identified content items;
• select a set of the identified content items having at least a threshold amount of interaction by users of the social networking system;
• present information identifying the set of the identified content items to the user at a time within the determined time period;
• increase a frequency with which information identifying additional content items provided to the one or more groups including the user is presented to the user during a time interval following the determined time period, if the user interacted with the presented information at greater than a threshold frequency;
• and
• decrease the frequency with which the information identifying additional content items provided to the one or more groups including the user is presented to the user during the time interval following the determined time period, if the user interacted with the presented information at less than an additional threshold frequency.