RECOMMENDING CONTACTS IN A SOCIAL NETWORK
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0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method and system for recommending potential contacts to a target user is provided. A recommendation system identifies users who are related to the target user through no more than a maximum degree of separation. The recommendation system identifies the users by starting with the contacts of the target user and identifying users who are contacts of the target user'"'"'s contacts, contacts of those contacts, and so on. The recommendation system then ranks the identified users, who are potential contacts for the target user, based on a likelihood that the target user will want to have a direct relationship with the identified users. The recommendation system then presents to the target user a ranking of the users who have not been filtered out.
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Citations
40 Claims
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1-20. -20. (canceled)
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21. A computer system for recommending potential contacts for a target user based on analysis of contact lists of a plurality of users, comprising:
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a data store containing contact lists of the users, including a contact list for the target user; a memory storing computer-executable instructions of a component that identifies, from the contact lists, social paths from the target user to other users, a social path being a combination of a first contact path from the target user to a common user and a second contact path from an other user to the common user, such that each user on the first contact path and the second contact path are on the social path, a contact path from a first user to a second user being a directed path of contacts identified from the contact lists; a component that filters out users on the identified social paths who do not satisfy a recommendation criterion; and a component that ranks the users on the identified social paths based on path lengths of the social paths; a component that presents to the target user an indication of the ranking of the non-filtered-out users as recommendations for potential contacts; and a processor for executing the computer-executable instructions stored in the memory. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27)
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28. A computer system for recommending potential contacts to a first user, comprising:
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a data store containing contact lists of users, including a contact list for the first user and a contact list for a second user; a memory for storing computer-executable instructions of a component that identifies, from the contact lists, contact paths from the first user to other users and contact paths from the second user to other users; a component that, when there is a contact path from the first user to another user and a contact path from the second user to that same other user, indicates that a social path exists from the first user to the second user; and a component that recommends to the first user the second user as a potential contact based on the existence of the social path; and a processor for executing the computer-executable instructions stored in the memory. - View Dependent Claims (29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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35. A computer-readable storage medium containing instructions for controlling a computing system to identify potential contacts for a target user, by a method comprising:
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providing a plurality of contact lists of users, each contact list identifying contacts of that user; identifying from a contact list of the target user contact paths from the target user to other users that are within a maximum contact path length, a contact path being a directed path of contacts such that each contact in the directed path is in the contact list of the prior contact in the directed path; ranking users on the identified contact paths; filtering out users on the identified contact paths who do not satisfy a recommendation criterion; and storing an indication of the ranking of the non-filtered-out users as an identification of potential contacts. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39, 40)
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Specification