System and method for providing information via a network

• US 20060059141A1
• Filed: 08/30/2005
• Published: 03/16/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 08/30/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Yonezawa, Takashi
• Granted Patent: US 9,892,195 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

An efficient method and system is provided for promptly providing recommended information on a product or service giving consideration to a site user trend. It comprises a recommended information providing server for managing information on users and user terminals used by users to access the recommended information providing server. The recommended information providing server has an information management section for managing transmission network information for specifying a channel for transmitting information among the plurality of user terminals. The transmission network information includes settings of users similar in trends to a target user as virtual users. Upon receiving event information (e.g., purchase of product A) from a user terminal of a user set as a virtual user, the recommended information providing server references the transmission network information, specifies a destination (target user) of the recommended information, and sends the recommended information to a user terminal of the destination via a user agent section.

Claims

1. A system for providing a plurality of users with recommended information via a plurality of user terminals connected to a network, comprising:

a table for storing association information in which a first user is associated with at least one second user based on a pre-computed similarity among the users and the second user is set as a virtual user of the first user; and

sending means for specifying the first user associated with the second user based on the association information stored in the table and sending recommended information on event information to a user terminal of the specified first user, in response to receiving the event information, which is information on an activity on the network conducted by the second user.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the similarity is computed for each of the plurality of users and the association information is stored in the table as transmission network information for specifying a channel for transmitting information between the plurality of user terminals.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein the similarity is computed based on previously collected information on user trends of the plurality of users.

4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the user trends include information on product purchase histories or service use histories of the users.

5. The system according to claim 3, wherein the user trends include information on preferences, interests, or attributes of the users.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein the sending means acquires product purchase information or service use information of the second user as the event information and sends the product purchase information or the service use information as the recommended information to the user terminal of the first user.

7. The system according to claim 1, further comprising history management means for managing histories of the recommended information sent to the first user, wherein the sending means references the histories managed by the history management means upon acquiring the event information of the second user, and does not send the recommended information if the recommended information corresponding to the event information has already been sent to the first user.

8. A method of providing a plurality of users with recommended information from a computer connected to a network via a plurality of user terminals connected to the network, comprising the steps of:

the computer previously storing user information in a database, the user information being information on the plurality of users;

the computer computing a similarity between the users based on the user information;

the computer storing association information in a table, in which a first user is associated with at least one second user based on the similarity and the second user is set as a virtual user of the first user;

the computer receiving event information, which is information on an activity on the network conducted by the second user;

the computer specifying the first user associated with the second user based on the association information stored in the table, in response to the reception of the event information; and

the computer sending recommended information on the event information to a user terminal of the specified first user.

9. The method according to claim 8, wherein the storing step includes storing the association information as transmission network information for specifying information transmitting channels between the plurality of user terminals of the plurality of users, based on the similarity previously computed for each of the plurality of users.

10. The method according to claim 8, wherein the user information includes information on product purchase histories or service use histories of the users.

11. The method according to claim 8, wherein the user information includes information on preferences, interests, or attributes of the users.

12. The method according to claim 8, wherein:

the receiving step acquires product purchase information or service use information of the second user as the event information; and

the sending step sends recommended information for recommending the product or the service.

13. The method according to claim 8, further comprising the step of the computer acquiring a history of the recommended information in the sending step, wherein the sending step does not send the recommended information if equivalent recommended information has already been sent to the user terminal of the first user specified in the specifying step, based on the history acquired in the history acquiring step.