Automatic friends selection and association based on events

A computer-based method executable by a processor for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) to a user of an online social network for automatically generating a friend subset based on future social events of a user, said GUI being included in a web page, said method comprising computer executable instructions for:

• receiving future social events data, in an electronic form, from an online social network associated with the user, wherein the future social events data includes one or more future social events that the user plans on attending;
• providing a first display area for displaying a user profile, wherein the user profile includes a contact list including one or more contacts of the user;
• receiving the one or more future social events data, in an electronic form, associated with one or more of the contacts of the user from at least one of an address book and a calendar associated with one or more of the contacts from the contact list, wherein the one or more future social events data includes one or more future social events to be attended by one or more of the contacts;
• correlating the received one or more future social events data associated with the contacts of the user with the received one or more future social events data associated with the user to determine common future social events to be attended by both the user and the one or more contacts in the contact list, said each identified contact including a graphical icon and associated identity information;
• based on the common future social events to be attended by both the user and the one or more contacts, providing a second display area for displaying on the web page a friend subset to the user of the one or more contacts having future social events corresponding to the future social events of the user, the friend subset having a graphical icon displayed on the GUI representing each determined contact having a common future social event with the user;
• and
• in response to the user selecting at least one contact by hovering over the graphical icon of the contact listed in the friend subset, providing to the user a graphical display of all the future social events of the selected contact.

A system for automatically generating a friend subset for a user of an online social network from a contact list generated from an on-line address book of the user storing electronic data relating to one or more contacts of the user and from an on-line calendar of the user storing-electronic data relating to future social events of the user, said system comprising:

• a memory area for storing future social events data associated with the user received from an online social network, said received future social events data defining one or more future social events between a contact in the contact list and the user;
• a processor configured to execute computer-executable instructions, wherein the instructions, when executed, direct the processor to perform the steps for:
• retrieving, for each of the identified contacts in the contact list, one or more future social events from the on-line address book storing electronic data and one or more future social events from the on-line calendar, and retrieving associated identity information about the contact from a service provider external to the system, and storing the retrieved future social events of the identified contacts and the identity information of the contacts in said memory area;
• correlating the received future social events of the identified contacts with the received future social events data associated with the user to determine common future social events to be attended by both the user and the one or more identified contacts;
• based on the determined common future social events to be attended by both the user and the one or more identified contacts, determining a friend subset, the friend subset identifying one or more contacts having future social events in common with the user and each contact having an associated graphical icon;
• an interface for providing the selected friend subset to the user on a web page;
• in response to a selection from the user, via hovering over the graphical icon of one of the identified contacts of the displayed friend subset, said interface for providing the social events data of the associated future social events of the selected contact to the user;
• and
• wherein the processor dynamically updates the friends subset in response to an update of the future social events between the user and one of the contacts in the contact list.