Prioritizing Items From Different Categories In A News Stream

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a computer program for sending a customized news stream to be displayed on a user device, the computer-readable storage medium comprising:

• program instructions for identifying, by one or more servers, dwell times spent by a plurality of users while accessing a plurality of items, each item belonging to one media type from a plurality of media types, the plurality of media types having differing average dwell times;
• program instructions for determining, by the one or more servers, a respective average dwell time for each media type;
• program instructions for determining, at the one or more servers, a priority for each item of the plurality of items based on normalized dwell times of each item, the normalized dwell times of each item is a measurement of variance between the dwell time of the each item and the respective average dwell time of the media type of the each item;
• and
• program instructions for sending, from the one or more servers, a news stream to the user device for presentation on a display associated with the user device, the news stream being configured to be presented on the display associated with the user device in an order based on the priority of the items of the plurality of items, wherein the news stream includes items of two or more different media types.

A method for displaying a customized news stream, the method comprising:

• identifying, by one or more servers, dwell times spent by a plurality of users while accessing a plurality of items, each item belonging to one media type from a plurality of media types, wherein the plurality of media types includes types selected from a group consisting of news articles, videos, photographs, short messages, slideshows, or blogs, the plurality of media types having differing average dwell times;
• for each media type, determining, by the one or more servers, a respective average dwell time for each media type;
• determining, at the one or more servers, a first priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on a normalized dwell time of each item, the normalized dwell time is a measurement of variance between the dwell time of the each item and the respective average dwell time of the media type of the each item;
• and
• determining, at the one or more servers, a second priority for each item in the plurality of news items based on the first priority and a profile of a user;
• and
• sending, from the one or more servers, a news stream to the user for presentation on a display associated with the user device, the news stream being configured to be presented on the display in an order based on the second priority of the items in the plurality of news items, wherein operations of the method are executed by a processor.