Presenting groups of content item selected for a social networking system user based on content item characteristics

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

• identify a plurality of recommended users for a viewing user of a social networking system;
• retrieve a set of images associated with the plurality of recommended users for the viewing user, each image of the set of images having one or more characteristics from a set of characteristics, wherein characteristics of an image include attributes of a user providing the image to the social networking system, information describing additional social networking system users that interacted with the image, or temporal information associated with the image or associated with a user associated with image;
• generate a plurality of image groups from the set of images associated with the plurality of recommended users, each image group comprising a plurality of images of the set of images and being associated with a characteristic of the set of characteristics, the plurality of images of each image group having the characteristic associated with the image group;
• rank images within the plurality of image groups by applying a scoring function associated with the image group, wherein the scoring function determines an expected amount of interaction by the viewing user with images included in the image group, at least one image group having a scoring function that is different from that of another image group from the plurality of image groups;
• select, for each of the plurality of image groups, a subset of the plurality of images of the ranked images in the image groups satisfying at least a threshold score of a threshold position in the ranking, each image of each image group having the characteristic associated with the image group;
• select, based on the ranking, a featured image in each image group from the selected subset of images associated with the image group;
• generate a feed of images comprising the generated image groups;
• and
• present the feed of images to the viewing user through a client device, the feed of images displaying the selected subset of images from each of the plurality of image groups in a mosaic grid including the featured image of each image group, the featured image of each image group being larger in size than the other images in the image group.

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising computer program instructions that, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to perform steps comprising:
• identifying a plurality of recommended users for a viewing user of a social networking system;
• retrieving a set of images associated with the plurality of recommended users for the viewing user, each image of the set of images having one or more characteristics from a set of characteristics, wherein characteristics of an image include attributes of a user providing the image to the social networking system, information describing additional social networking system users that interacted with the image, or temporal information associated with the image or associated with a user associated with the image;
• generating a plurality of image groups from the set of images associated with the plurality of recommended users, each image group comprising a plurality of images of the set of images and being associated with a characteristic of the set of characteristics, the plurality of images of each image group having the characteristic associated with the image group;
• ranking images within the plurality of image groups by applying a scoring function associated with the image group, wherein the scoring function determines an expected amount of interaction by the viewing user with images included in the image group, at least one image group having a scoring function that is different from that of another image group from the plurality of image groups;
• selecting, for each of the plurality of image groups, a subset of the plurality of images of the ranked images in the image groups satisfying at least a threshold score or a threshold position in the ranking, each image of each image group having the characteristic associated with the image group;
• selecting, based on the ranking, a featured image for each image group from the selected subset of images associated with the image group;
• generating a feed of images comprising the generated image groups;
• and
• presenting the feed of images to the viewing user through a client device, the feed of images displaying the selected subset of images from each of the plurality of image groups in a mosaic grid including the featured image of each image group, the featured image of each image group being larger in size than the other images in the image group.