FORUM SEARCH WITH TIME-DEPENDENT ACTIVITY WEIGHTING
First Claim
1. A method comprising:
- monitoring, using a computer, forum activity in a selected group of online forums accessible over a computer network, wherein the forum activity is caused by contributions from a plurality of clients participating in the online forums;
generating an index of forum activity measurements comprising activity measures for each of the online forums, using the computer;
receiving a data request for forum activity measurements pertaining to one or more online forums included in the group of online forums from the index; and
serving the forum activity measurements from the index in response to the data request.
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Abstract
A search engine index measures and tracks one or more numeric indicators of activity at different times, including a most current time, in on-line forums and social networking sites. Such indicators may include, for example, a current volume per unit time of messages or data posted to the site, a moving average of such volume, a moving average of current participants over time, a count of current participants, other indication of site activity, or any combination of such indicators. The search engine is responsive to queries seeking forums ranked by activity for a defined time period, including a most current time. The search engine prioritizes search results to identify the specified sites or locations in order of activity (among other possible criteria) relative to a defined time.
93 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method comprising:
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monitoring, using a computer, forum activity in a selected group of online forums accessible over a computer network, wherein the forum activity is caused by contributions from a plurality of clients participating in the online forums; generating an index of forum activity measurements comprising activity measures for each of the online forums, using the computer; receiving a data request for forum activity measurements pertaining to one or more online forums included in the group of online forums from the index; and serving the forum activity measurements from the index in response to the data request. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A system comprising:
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a search engine implemented in a computer processor and memory, configured for serving a search engine interface and handling search requests from clients; an activity index application implemented in a processor and memory operatively associated with the search engine, and configured to provide measures of forum activity in response to requests from the search engine, wherein the measures of forum activity quantify activity caused by contributions from a plurality of clients participating in one or more online forums identified by the requests from the search engine. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A computer-readable medium encoded with instructions configured, when executed by a computer processor, to cause the computer to:
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measure forum activity in online forums accessible over a computer network, wherein the forum activity is caused by contributions from clients posting messages to the online forums; maintain measurements of forum activity resulting from measuring the forum activity in a database in association with identifiers for respective ones of the online forums; respond to requests for the forum activity measurements pertaining to specified ones of online forums at a specified time by providing the forum activity measurements associated with the specified online forums and specified times from the database. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20)
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Specification