SEARCH RESULTS WEIGHTED BY REAL-TIME SHARING ACTIVITY

• US 20080133495A1
• Filed: 11/30/2006
• Published: 06/05/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Red Hat, Inc. (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Fischer, Donald
• Granted Patent: US 8,671,114 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

Embodiments of the present invention provide a mechanism for weighting search results based on active and passive sharing activity among users in the context of a social network. In particular, information being shared among users is monitored. When a search is requested by a user, information recently shared among a user'"'"'s social network is consulted and is used to weight the search results in the relevance calculation. For example, sharing activity that occurred recently or ongoing is used to weight the search results.

Claims

1. A method of providing search results, said method comprising:

identifying information being shared among a plurality of users in a social network;

receiving a search request from at least one of the users;

determining a set of results for the search request;

weighting the set of results based on information recently shared with other users known by the user in the social network; and

providing the weighted search results to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying information being shared among a plurality of users in a social network comprises actively monitoring sharing activity of the user and the user'"'"'s social network.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying information being shared among a plurality of users in a social network comprises passively monitoring sharing activity of the user and the user'"'"'s social network.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein weighting the set of results based on information recently shared comprises selecting search results based on information shared when the search request was made.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the search results based on a profile of the user.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the search results based on an age of the user.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the search results based on a location of the user.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the search results based on a type of content in the search results.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing information indicating a strength of relevance to the information recently shared.

10. An apparatus comprising means configured to perform the method of claim 1.

11. A computer readable medium comprising executable program code to configure a computer to perform the method of claim 1.