Content offers based on social influences

A content management system that provides content items responsive to received requests, the content management system including:

• a social influence engine enabled to determine customizable social influence scores for particular publishers of content;
• a content sponsor engine that enables a content sponsor to modify a set of criteria used to generate a dynamically customizable social influence score that is used to distribute content of the content sponsor to users of a social network by performing operations including:
• generating an electronic user interface that presents separately selectable controls that each modify types of user interactions that are used to compute a dynamically customized social influence score that is assigned to each particular social network user among a plurality of users of a social network when interaction with the controls occurs, wherein the types of interactions that are modified by interaction with the separately selectable controls include at least a number of friends of the particular social network user on the social network that have a social influence score above a percentile threshold;
• modifying the set of criteria used to compute the dynamically customized social influence score to include the types of interactions specified by the content sponsor through interaction with the separately selectable controls;
• determining a dynamically customized social influence score for one or more users from the plurality of users of the social network using the types of interactions included in the modified set of criteria;
• and
• distributing content to the one or more users from the plurality of users of the social network based on the dynamically customized social influence score for each of the one or more users of the plurality of users of the social network determined using the modified set of criteria.

A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage device and comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• generate an electronic user interface that presents separately selectable controls that each modify types of user interactions that are used to compute a dynamically customized social influence score that is assigned to each particular social network user among a plurality of users of a social network when interaction with the controls occurs, wherein the types of interactions that are modified by interaction with the separately selectable controls include at least a number of friends of the particular social network user on the social network that have a social influence score above a percentile threshold;
• modify the set of criteria used to compute the dynamically customized social influence score to include the types of interactions specified by the content sponsor through interaction with the separately selectable controls;
• determine a dynamically customized social influence score for one or more users from the plurality of users of the social network using the types of interactions included in the modified set of criteria;
• and
• distribute content to the one or more users from the plurality of users of the social network based on the dynamically customized social influence score for each of the one or more users of the plurality of users of the social network determined using the modified set of criteria.