Stream engine using compressed bitsets

1. A method, implemented at least in part by a computing device, for creating compressed bitsets storing information related to user activity, the method comprising:

executing code by one more processors to cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

monitoring a new activity being performed within a computing environment;

obtaining a set of compressed bitsets, wherein the set of compressed bitsets represents followable aspects of activities being performed within the computing environment, wherein each followable is represented by a unique one of the bitsets and each of the activities is represented by at least one bit location and at least one bit value in each of the bitsets;

identifying one or more followables associated with the new activity being monitored; and

appending one or more bits to the obtained set of compressed bitsets to generate a revised set of compressed bitsets, wherein the one or more bits appended are bits that represent the new activity according to the identified followables.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the followables associated with the new activity comprises:

identifying one or more of who, what, when, where, and why followables are associated with the new activity.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the set of compressed bitsets comprises a compressed bitset for each unique followable associated with the activities being performed by users within the computing environment.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each compressed bitset, of the set of compressed bitsets, has the same number of bits.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein:

creating a document comprises one or more of:

creating a blog post, a word processing document, and a tweet;

viewing a document comprises one or more of:

clicking on a document in a file system and on a web page;

the user liking a document comprises one or more of:

the user clicking on a user interface element associated with the document indicating the user likes the document; and

the user commenting comprises the user adding a comment associated with the document.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein the followable is a consistently identifiable thing from which the activities can be manipulated.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein each compressed bitset, of the set of compressed bitsets, is compressed using run-length encoding.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the appending bits to the obtained set of compressed bitsets comprises appending a bit value to each compressed bitset for the new activity.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the appending bits to the obtained set of compressed bitsets comprises:

for each compressed bitset, appending one bit:

when the compressed bitset is associated with a followable that is one of the identified followable, setting the one bit to a first bit value indicating the followable is one of the identified followables; and

when the compressed bitset is associated with a followable that is not one of the identified followables, setting the one bit to a second bit value, different from the first bit value, indicating the followable is not one of the identified followables.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the first bit value is a one, and wherein the second bit value is a zero.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein executing code by the one more processors cause the computing device to perform further operations comprising:

monitoring one or more additional new activities being performed within the computing environment; and

performing the obtaining, the identifying, and the appending for the one or more additional new activities being performed.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein executing code by the one more processors cause the computing device to perform further operations comprising:

creating a custom stream, wherein creating a custom stream comprises:

receiving a custom stream request comprising one or more followables for the custom stream;

identifying one or more compressed bitsets, of the set of compressed bitsets, corresponding to the one or more followables for the custom stream; and

using the one or more compressed bitsets identified for the custom stream, composing a view that presents activities common to the one or more compressed bitsets for the custom stream.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein each compressed bitset, of the set of compressed bitsets, contains a sequence of bits, and wherein each bit, of the sequence of bits, is associated with a different activity.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the activities comprise one or more of:

a user of the computing environment creating a document;

the user viewing a document;

a user liking a document;

a user editing a document;

a user modifying a document; and

a user commenting on a document.