US 11,855,947 B1
Gallery of ephemeral messages
Nicholas Allen, Santa Monica, CA (US); Donald Giovannini, Venice, CA (US); Chiayi Lin, Venice, CA (US); Robert Murphy, Venice, CA (US); and Evan Spiegel, Los Angeles, CA (US)
Assigned to Snap Inc., Santa Monica, CA (US)
Filed by Snap Inc., Santa Monica, CA (US)
Filed on Jul. 29, 2016, as Appl. No. 15/224,312.
Application 15/224,312 is a continuation of application No. 14/505,478, filed on Oct. 2, 2014, granted, now 9,537,811.
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 15/16 (2006.01); H04L 51/42 (2022.01); G06F 3/04847 (2022.01); G06F 3/0482 (2013.01); H04L 67/568 (2022.01); G06Q 50/00 (2012.01)
CPC H04L 51/42 (2022.05) [G06F 3/0482 (2013.01); G06F 3/04847 (2013.01); H04L 67/568 (2022.05); G06Q 50/01 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
at a server system, maintaining a gallery comprising a plurality of ephemeral messages, each of which has respective visual media message content, the gallery being available for online viewing over a distributed computer network upon request via one or more recipient devices associated with respective recipients of the gallery;
maintaining a plurality of message availability parameters corresponding to the plurality of ephemeral messages, each message availability parameter indicating a time value for continued availability of the respective corresponding ephemeral message for viewing as part of the gallery, wherein the maintaining of the plurality of message availability parameters comprises, for each of the plurality of ephemeral messages:
responsive to receiving the respective ephemeral message for inclusion in the gallery, automatically assigning to the ephemeral message a respective message availability parameter that expires a default length of time subsequent to posting of the ephemeral message to the gallery; and
posting the respective ephemeral message to the gallery, each ephemeral message having an associated posting time indicating the time of posting to the gallery;
in response to receiving an online gallery view request from a requesting device forming part of the one or more recipient devices, causing automated sequential display of the gallery on the requesting device, the automated sequential display comprising displaying the respective visual media message content of the plurality of ephemeral messages in the gallery one after another in chronological sequence for respective non-overlapping display durations, wherein the chronological sequence of the automated sequential display is based on respective posting times such that an oldest ephemeral message, having an earliest posting time, is displayed first in the chronological sequence; and
in an automated procedure performed using one or more computer processors configured therefor:
identifying expiry of one of the message availability parameters; and
at the server system, in response to the identifying of the expired message availability parameter, automatically removing from the gallery the ephemeral message that corresponds to the expired message availability parameter, so that the removed ephemeral message is automatically excluded from automated sequential display of the gallery responsive to subsequent online gallery view requests from any of the one or more recipient devices with respect to the gallery.