Document Distribution Recommender System & Method

• US 20080071872A1
• Filed: 09/17/2007
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/20/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Right Point LLC
• Inventors: GROSS, JOHN NICHOLAS
• Granted Patent: US 7,996,456 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 15/825 Dataflow computers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/04 Real-time or near real-time messaging, e.g. instant messaging [IM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/08 Annexed information, e.g. attachments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services

Abstract

A document management system monitors proposed recipients for documents and provides recommendations on alterations to the distribution set, such as by adding or removing recipients.

Claims

1. A method of controlling distribution of electronic documents comprising:

a. providing a document;

b. receiving an initial set of designated recipients for said document from a user;

c. evaluating content of said document and/or other document distribution designations by said user to determine if said initial set of designated recipients for said document should be modified;

d. forming a final set of designated recipients based on the results of step (c).

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said document is compared to prior documents generated by said user or a set of other users related to said user to identify distribution recipients of said prior documents.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein said prior document distribution designations are correlated to identify relationships between recipients and to predict an additional set of recipients to be added to said set of designated recipients to form said final set.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein said prior document distribution designations are correlated to identify relationships between recipients and to predict an additional set of recipients to be removed from said set of designated recipients to form said final set.

5. The method of claim 1, further including a step:

providing a suggestion to said user for a proposed recipient group based on correlating characteristics of recipients and documents associated with said user.

6. The method of claim 2 further including steps:

analyzing a plurality of documents authored by said user or other users to classify content therein and form a set of individual content topics; and

processing said document to determine a topic associated with the same;

wherein said document is compared only to prior documents which are related to said topic.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein said final set includes a first set of additional recipients determined to be correlated above a first specified threshold value with said set of designated recipients.

8. The method of claim 7 further including a step:

predicting a second set of additional recipients determined to be correlated above a second specified threshold value with said first set of additional recipients.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein a sequence used by said user for entering said initial set of designated recipients is monitored to determine a correlation to prior sequences used by said user.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein said electronic documents are emails and/or instant messages (IMs), and said initial set of designated recipients is obtained from an email/IM address book.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein said final set of designated recipients are derived from said email/IM address book and/or address books from third party accounts.

12. The method of claim 1 further including a step:

providing an alert to the user when an inappropriate recipient is detected.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein step (c) is only performed when said initial set of designated recipients includes a plurality of recipients.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein content of said document is analyzed while the user is generating said document.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein prior document designations by the user are pre-computed prior to generating said document to accelerate evaluation during step (c).

16. The method of claim 1 wherein at least part of step (c) is performed while step (a) is taking place.

17. A method of controlling distribution of electronic documents comprising:

a. identifying a document;

b. receiving an initial set of designated recipients for said document;

c. evaluating content of said document to determine if said set of designated recipients should be modified;

d. forming a final set of designated recipients based on the results of step (c).

18. The method of claim 17 wherein said document is also analyzed to identify additional uniform resource locators (URLs) which should be added based on existing URLs in said document.

19. A method of controlling distribution of electronic documents comprising:

a. generating a document;

b. receiving an initial set of designated recipients for said document from a user;

c. evaluating prior document distribution designations by said user to determine if said set of designated recipients should be modified;

d. forming a final set of designated recipients based on the results of step (c).

20. The method of claim 19 wherein said document is also analyzed to identify additional uniform resource locators (URLs) which should be added based on existing URLs in said document.