User Profile Management System

• US 20080301166A1
• Filed: 06/10/2005
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Sugiyama, Keiji, Ishikawa, Akira, Hirai, Junichi
• Granted Patent: US 7,650,342 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/102
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/04 Billing or invoicing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

The present invention provides a user profile which takes a user'"'"'s situation into consideration. A management device 100 creates, in response to a request from applications 110, a new user profile (hereinafter referred to as “comprehensive user profile”) based on a plurality of user profiles, and provides it to the applications 110. The management device 100 always monitors a user'"'"'s situation, directly or indirectly correlates the user'"'"'s situation at the time that the user profile is registered with the user profile, and stores the same. Because the management device creates the comprehensive user profile based on the user profile corresponding to the current user situation, the comprehensive user profile reflects the user'"'"'s situation which changes from time to time.

Claims

1. A management device for collecting user profiles from a user terminal, the management device being connected to the user terminal in which one or more applications operates, the management device comprising:

determination criteria storing means for storing user situation determination criteria for determining a user situation;

collecting means for collecting and storing user profiles created by the one or more applications;

request accepting means for accepting a request for a user profile from any of the one or more applications;

user situation managing means for determining, in response to the request, a current user situation based on the user situation determination criteria;

creating means for extracting from the user profiles stored in the collecting means one or more user profiles relating to the current user situation and creating a comprehensive user profile of the current user situation based on the one or more extracted user profiles; and

transmitting means for transmitting the comprehensive user profile created by the creating means to a requester.

2. The management device according to claim 1, wherein the user situation managing means further accepts registration of user situation determination criteria.

3. The management device according to claim 1, wherein every time the collecting means collects a user profile, the user situation managing means will determine the user situation at the time of collection based on the user situation determination criteria;

the collecting means correlates the user situation determined by the user situation managing means with the collected user profiles and stores the same; and

the creating means extracts one or more user profiles corresponding to the current user situation and creates the comprehensive user profile based on the one or more extracted user profiles.

4. The management device according to claim 1, wherein the user situation managing means correlates predetermined user situations with predetermined link information and stores the same;

the collecting means correlates the collected user profiles with the link information and stores the same; and

the creating means extracts one or more user profiles using link information corresponding to the current user situation as a key, and creates the comprehensive user profile based on the one or more extracted user profiles.

5. The management device according to claim 1, wherein the user situation managing means stores a relevance level table that defines relevance levels of a predetermined plurality of user situations;

and

the creating means specifies, from the relevance level table, another user situation related to a current user situation (hereinafter referred to as “

related user situation”

), further extracts one or more user profiles relating to the related user situation in addition to one or more user profiles relating to the current user situation, and creates the comprehensive user profile based on the extracted user profiles.

6. The management device according to claim 5, wherein the creating means weights the extracted user profiles based on a relevance level between the current user situation and the related user situation, and creates the comprehensive user profile based on each weighted user profile.

7. The management device according to claim 1, wherein the request accepting means receives, together with the request for a user profile, a format of the user profile that the application can interpret;

and

the creating means transmits the created comprehensive user profile after converting the format thereof into the format that the application can interpret.

8. A management method for collecting user profiles from a user terminal, the management method executed by a computer being connected to the user terminal in which one or more applications operate, the management method comprising:

a determination criteria storing step of storing user situation determination criteria for determining a user situation;

a collecting step of collecting and storing user profiles created by the one or more applications;

a request accepting step of accepting a request for a user profile from any of the one or more applications;

a user situation managing step of determining a current user situation based on the user situation determination criteria in response to the request;

a creating step of extracting one or more user profiles from the stored user profiles relating to the current user situation, and creating a comprehensive user profile of the current user situation based on the one or more extracted user profiles; and

a transmitting step of transmitting the comprehensive user profile created by the creating step to a requester.

9. A management program causing a computer terminal to function as a management device for collecting user profiles from a user terminal in which any one or more applications operates, the management device being connected the user terminal, the management program causing the computer terminal to function as:

determination criteria storing means for storing user situation determination criteria for determining a user situation;

collecting means for collecting and storing user profiles created by the one or more applications;

request accepting means for accepting a request for user profile from any of the one or more applications;

user situation managing means for determining a current user situation based on the user situation determination criteria in response to the request;

creating means for extracting one or more user profiles from the stored user profiles relating to the current user situation, and creating a comprehensive user profile of the current user situation based on the one or more extracted user profiles; and

transmitting means for transmitting the user profile created by the user profile creating means to a requester.