Zooming interaction tracking and popularity determination

Non-transitory physical computer storage comprising instructions stored therein for implementing, in one or more processors, operations for identifying popular network content, the operations comprising:

• displaying, to a user of a client computing device, a content page comprising a plurality of content items;
• receiving, from the user, touch input indicating a portion of the content page on which to zoom display of the content page, the portion comprising at least one content item of the plurality of content items, wherein the touch input indicating the portion of the content page on which to zoom display is performed independently of any content request;
• processing, exclusively at the client computing device, the touch input to zoom the display of the content page on the portion;
• and
• transmitting interaction data to a network node, wherein the interaction data indicates the at least one content item on which the user zoomed the display of the content page independently of any content request.

A computer-implemented method for assessing popularity levels of network content, the computer-implemented method comprising:

• as implemented by one or more server computing devices configured to execute specific instructions,
• receiving, from mobile computing devices of a plurality of users, interaction data reflective of zooming actions performed by said users on a network-accessible content page, wherein the network-accessible content page comprises a plurality of content items, and wherein the zooming actions are processed exclusively at the mobile computing devices and do not cause content to be requested from a server;
• calculating respective popularity levels of each of the plurality of content items, the respective popularity levels calculated based at least on the zooming actions that do not cause content to be requested from a server and that are processed exclusively at the mobile computing devices;
• and
• storing popularity data indicating the popularity level of at least one of the content items in an electronic data store.