Contextual content publishing system and method

• US 20080162403A1
• Filed: 12/28/2006
• Published: 07/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Sundaresan, Neelakantan
• Granted Patent: US 10,839,403 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/337 Profile generation, learning or modification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute

Abstract

A method and a system for publishing contextual content. A method and a system maintain user profile information on a user of referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system. The method and system may transmit the user profile information to the referee system in response to the user using the reference to access the referee system. The referee system is to adapt content, presented to a user when accessing the referee system, based on the received user profile information.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a content module to determine referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system;

a profile module to maintain user profile information on a user of the referrer content; and

a publisher module to;

transmit the user profile information to the referee system in response to the user using the reference to access the referee system, the referee system to adapt content, presented to the user when accessing the referee system, based on the received user profile information.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the reference is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

3. The system of claim 2, further including a URL redirector to add user profile information to the URL to create an extended URL.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the publisher module is to publish the extended URL with the referrer content on a user device.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the transmitting of the user profile information comprises transmitting user profile data through a mark-up language.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the reference is a hyperlink.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the referrer content is a website, web page or document.

8. The system of claim 1, further including a tracking module to record behavior of the user relating to the referrer content.

9. The system of claim 1, further including an external data collection module to access a third party profile database to obtain additional user profile information.

10. A system comprising:

a user information module to receive user profile information relating to a user of referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system;

a content module to adapt content, based on the received user profile information;

a publisher module to present the adapted referee content to the user when the user accesses the referee system.

11. The system of claim 10, further comprising a rules engine to apply predefined rules to the received user profile information to enable the content module to adapt the content to suit the profile of the user.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the user information module is to receive a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) from the referrer system.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the user information module includes a URL parser to extract user profile information from the URL.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the user profile information is received as part of a markup language.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the user profile information is received as part of two way communication between the referrer system and the referee system.

16. A method comprising:

maintaining user profile information on a user of referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system; and

transmitting the user profile information to the referee system in response to the user using the reference to access the referee system, the referee system to adapt content, presented to a user when accessing the referee system, based on the received user profile information.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the reference is a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the transmitting of the user profile information comprises adding the user profile information to a URL to create an extended URL.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein transmitting of the user profile information comprises publishing the extended URL with the referrer content.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein the transmitting of the user profile information comprises transmitting user profile data through a mark-up language.

21. The method of claim 17, wherein the reference is a hyperlink.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein the referrer content is a website, a web page or document.

23. The method of claim 18, further including parsing the extended URL at the referee system to obtain the user profile information.

24. The method of claim 23, further including applying predefined rules to the user profile information to obtain user content data and, based on the user content data, determining the adapted content of the referee system.

25. The method of claim 16, wherein maintaining user profile information on the user includes recording behavior of the user relating to the referrer content.

26. The method of claim 16, wherein maintaining user profile information on the user includes accessing a third party profile database to obtain additional user profile information.

31. A machine-readable medium embodying a set of instructions to perform the method of claim 16.

27. A system comprising:

means for determining referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system;

means for maintaining user profile information on a user of the referrer content; and

means for;

transmitting the user profile information to the referee system in response to the user using the reference to access the referee system, the referee system to adapt content, presented to the user when accessing the referee system, based on the received user profile information.

28. The system of claim 27, further including means for adding user profile information to a URL to create an extended URL which is to be transmitted to the referee system.

29. A system comprising:

means for receiving user profile information on a user of referrer content associated with a referrer system, the referrer content including a reference to a referee system;

means for adapting content, based on the received user profile information; and

means for presenting the adapted referee content to the user when the user accesses the referee system.

30. The system of claim 29, further comprising means for applying predefined rules to the received user profile information to enable adapting the content to suit the profile of the user.