Systems and methods of generating a common social timeline to facilitate social discovery in a social networking environment are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, of receiving data items associated with users of the social network, identifying a first set of data items associated with a first user, and processing the first set of data items to select a first set of characteristics. The method further comprises comparing the first set of characteristics with other sets of characteristics describing other users to select a subset of the other users having one or more characteristics that are the same or similar to one or more of the first set of characteristics.