Application-centric socialization

• US 10,075,508 B2
• Filed: 06/25/2013
• Issued: 09/11/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Sivalingam, Lenin Ravindranath, Bahl, Paramvir, Musa, Abm, Chu, David
• Primary Examiner(s): Hussain, Tauqir
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mohammadi, Kamran
• Application Number:
  US13/926,778
• Publication Number:
  US 20140280443A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,904 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/65 Updates security arrangements therefor G06F21/57
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46

Abstract

An application may be augmented for application-centric socialization activities for a user of the application, based on instrumenting the application for the application-centric socialization activities. The application-centric socialization activities may be launched from within the augmented application on a device, the application-centric socialization activities determined based on one or more contexts associated with the user that are determined during execution of the augmented application on the device.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing a common set of keys for use by a plurality of applications to expose application contexts;

providing an application programming interface (API) for the plurality of applications to call at runtime to set values for individual keys;

augmenting a first application by instrumenting the first application to identify a particular user interest expressed by a first user during execution of the first application on a first mobile device of the first user and call the API to set a particular key to a particular value representing the particular user interest; and

responsive to the first application setting the particular key to the particular value;

identifying a second application, other than the first application, that has also set the particular key to the same particular value as the first application by calling the API in response to a second user also expressing the particular user interest during execution of the second application on a second mobile device of the second user; and

initiating execution of the second application on the first mobile device of the first user,

wherein at least the identifying the second application is performed by a server that communicates with the first mobile device and the second mobile device over a network.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a particular location in which the first user has expressed interest via the first application; and

providing the particular location to the second application, wherein the second application, when executed on the first mobile device, outputs information associated with the particular location.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

configuring the first application to initiate an application-centric socialization activity based at least on the particular user interest.

4. The method of claim 3, the application-centric socialization activity comprising a discussion with other users.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising identifying the discussion based at least on the particular user interest.

6. The method of claim 4, further comprising configuring the first application to employ a first widget to perform the discussion.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

configuring the first widget to obtain messages relating to the particular value set by the first application using the API; and

configuring the first widget to display the messages with the first application.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

representing the first application, the second application, and the particular value of the particular key as nodes in a context graph; and

identifying the second application by traversing the context graph.

9. The method of claim 8, the context graph having further nodes representing the individual keys.

10. The method of claim 9, the context graph having edges connecting different application nodes representing different applications to different key nodes representing different keys used by the different applications.

11. The method of claim 10, the context graph having further edges connecting the different key nodes to different value nodes representing different values set by the different applications for the different keys.

12. A system comprising:

at least one hardware processor; and

at least one memory storing computer-executable instructions which, when executed by the at least one hardware processor, cause the at least one hardware processor to;

provide a common set of keys for use by a plurality of applications to expose application contexts;

provide an application programming interface (API) for the plurality of applications to call at runtime to set values for individual keys;

identify a particular topic of interest expressed by a first user during execution of a first application on a first computing device, the first application being instrumented to call the API to set a particular key from the common set of keys to a particular value identifying the particular topic of interest;

responsive to the first application setting the particular key to the particular value;

identify a second application, other than the first application, that has also set the particular key to the same particular value as the first application by calling the API in response to a second user also expressing the particular topic of interest during execution of the second application on a second computing device of the second user; and

send installation information for the second application over a network from the system to the first computing device.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the computer-executable instructions, when executed by the at least one hardware processor, cause the at least one hardware processor to:

identify the second user to the first user responsive to detecting that the second user has expressed interest in the particular topic of interest during execution of the second application on the second computing device.

14. The system of claim 12, the API specifying a first parameter identifying the particular key and a second parameter identifying the particular value.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the computer-executable instructions, when executed by the at least one hardware processor, cause the at least one hardware processor to:

configure a widget to tag particular content with the particular value for the particular key;

configure the first application to incorporate the widget; and

responsive to the first application setting the particular value for the particular key, cause the widget to provide the particular content to the first user on the first computing device.

16. The system of claim 15, the particular content comprising messages tagged with the particular value.

17. The system of claim 15, the particular content comprising images tagged with the particular value.

18. A hardware computer-readable storage medium storing executable code that, when executed, causes one or more processors to perform acts comprising:

providing a common set of keys for use by a plurality of applications to expose application contexts;

providing an application programming interface (API) for the plurality of applications to call at runtime to set values for individual keys;

augmenting a first application by instrumenting the first application to identify a particular category of interest expressed by a first user during execution of the first application on a first computing device by calling the API to set a particular key from the common set of keys to a particular value identifying the particular category of interest;

identifying a second application, other than the first application, that has also set the particular key to the same particular value as the first application by calling the API in response to a second user expressing interest in the particular category of interest during execution of the second application on a second computing device of the second user; and

responsive to identifying that the second application has also set the particular key to the particular value, initiating execution of the second application on the first computing device by communicating with the second computing device over a network.

19. The hardware computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, the acts further comprising:

causing the first computing device to display an option to identify related applications to the first application;

receiving another first user input selecting the option to identify the related applications; and

identifying the second application to the first user responsive to the another first user input.

20. The hardware computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, the first computing device and the second computing device being mobile computing devices.