Promoting content in a real-time messaging platform

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions, the instructions when executed by a processor configured to cause the processor to:

• receive a request for promoted content to be presented to a user of a real-time messaging platform that publicly broadcasts streams of messages authored by the users of the platform;
• select from a set of available promotion items a set of candidate promotion items based on the request and one or more targeted attributes of the user;
• for each of the set of candidate promotion items,
• provide the candidate promotion item for inclusion in one or more of the streams;
• identify in each of the streams one or more user engagement events for the candidate promotion item, each user engagement event indicating (1) an interaction between an engaging user of the real-time messaging platform and the candidate promotion item appearing in one of the streams and (2) a time when the interaction occurred,
• process the user engagement events to compute a resonance rating for the candidate promotion item, the resonance rating based on a level of engagement by the engaging users of the real-time messaging platform with the candidate promotion item, and
• decay the resonance rating based on the times indicated by the user engagement events;
• and
• select at least one of the set of candidate promotion items for presentation to at least one other of the user §in at least one other of the message streams based on the decayed resonance ratings.

A computer system, comprising:

• a computer processor;
• a promotion module configured to execute on the computer processor and to:
• receive a request for promoted content to be presented to a user of the real-time messaging platform that publicly broadcasts messages authored by users of the platform,
• select from a set of available promotion items a set of candidate promotion items based on the request and one or more targeted attributes of the user,
• for each of the set of candidate promotion items,
• provide the candidate promotion item for inclusion in one or more of the streams;
• identify in each of the streams one or more user engagement events for the candidate promotion item, each user engagement event indicating (1) an interaction between an engaging user of the real-time messaging platform and the candidate promotion item appearing in one of the streams and (2) a time when the interaction occurred,
• process the user engagement events to compute a resonance rating for the candidate promotion item, the resonance rating based on a level of engagement by the engaging users of the real-time messaging platform with the candidate promotion item, and
• decay the resonance rating based on the times indicated by the user engagement events, and
• select at least one of the set of candidate promotion items for presentation to the user based on the decayed resonance ratings.