SOCIAL NETWORK MAPPING

• US 20110078190A1
• Filed: 09/25/2009
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Samuel, Arjmand M., Halai, Sameer
• Granted Patent: US 8,214,301 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/780
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

Techniques for social network mapping are described. In an implementation, properties of a user'"'"'s contacts with two services are analyzed to identify matching contacts. Contacts may be determined to correspond to the same user when sufficient common properties are found between the contacts. For unmatched contacts following the property analysis, additional processing may be conducted to identify contacts that the unmatched contacts have in common. A number of common contacts found through this processing may be used, alone or in combination, with information regarding common properties to determine when unmatched contacts correspond to the same user.

Claims

1. A method implemented by a computing device comprising:

detecting initiation of mapping between a user'"'"'s contacts associated with two services;

responsive to the detecting, determining matches of contacts in the two services that correspond to a same user by;

comparing properties of each contact in one of the services with properties of contacts in the other service to derive matches based upon common properties between the contacts; and

analyzing contacts of unmatched contacts that remain after the comparing to determine additional matches based upon common contacts between the unmatched contacts.

2. A method as described in claim 1, further comprising combining contacts that correspond to the same user according to the matches to form combined contacts corresponding to the user.

3. A method as described in claim 2, further comprising employing the combined contacts in conjunction with one or more services made available from a service provider.

4. A method as described in claim 2, further comprising employing the combined contacts to enable collaborative interaction between the two services.

5. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the two services are provided by a single service provider.

6. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the two services are provided by different respective service providers.

7. A method as described in claim 1, wherein at least one of the two services comprises a social network service.

8. A method as described in claim 1, wherein at least one of the two services comprises an electronic messaging service.

9. A method as described in claim 1, wherein the two services correspond to social network services from different service providers and the contacts correspond to the user'"'"'s friends with the social network services.

10. A method as described in claim 1 further comprising:

obtaining contact data describing the user'"'"'s contacts associated with the two services responsive to the detecting;

constructing a representation of the user'"'"'s contacts for each of the two service based on the contact data; and

using the constructed representations to perform the determining, comparing, and analyzing.

11. A method as described in claim 1, wherein analyzing the contacts of the unmatched contacts comprises determining the common contacts between the unmatched contacts by comparing properties of the contacts of the unmatched contacts one to another.

12. One or more computer-readable storage media storing instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method comprising:

ascertaining common properties between a user'"'"'s contacts with two services;

identifying common contacts associated with the user'"'"'s contacts; and

determining matches of a user'"'"'s contacts that correspond to a same user based upon the common properties and the common contacts.

13. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 12, wherein the method caused by the instructions further comprises exposing an application programming interface (API) that is operable by one or more clients to cause the ascertaining, indentifying, and determining.

14. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 12, wherein the two services correspond to social network services from different service providers and the contacts correspond to the user'"'"'s friends with the social network services.

15. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 12, wherein the method caused by the instructions further comprises presenting contacts of the user that remain unmatched following the determining to the user to enable the user to manually input matches.

16. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 12, wherein the determining matches further comprises:

establishing a confidence threshold that defines when the common properties and common contacts between two of the user'"'"'s the contacts are sufficient to conclude that the two contacts correspond to the same user; and

assessing whether the confidence threshold has been met to determine the matches.

17. One or more computer-readable storage media as described in claim 12, wherein the method caused by the instructions further comprises detecting a request to initiate mapping of the user'"'"'s contacts and in response to the request:

examining an account associated with the user to identify the two services;

interacting with both of the two services to obtain representations of the user'"'"'s contacts with each of the two services; and

conducting the ascertaining, identifying, and determining using the obtained representations.

19. A system as described in claim 17, wherein the mapping module is further configured to output the combined representation to providers of the two social networks to enable collaborative interactions between the providers.

20. A system as described in claim 17, wherein the representations are graphical representations and the mapping module is further configured to interact with the two social network services to construct the graphical representations.

18. A system comprising:

one or more processors; and

one or more computer-readable storage media storing instructions that, when executed via the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to implement a mapping module configured to;

receive a request to sync friends of a user associated with two social networks;

obtain representations of the user'"'"'s friends with the two social networks responsive to the request, the representation configured to relate the friends to a plurality of properties;

identify friends of the user'"'"'s who are the same in the two social networks using the representations by at least;

comparing the plurality of properties of each friend in one of the social networks with the plurality of properties of friends in the other social network to identify matching friends based upon common properties between the friends; and

performing a friend of friend analysis for unmatched friends that remain after the comparing to identify additional matching friends based upon a number of common friends between the unmatched friends that is determined by the friend of friend analysis; and

construct a combined representation of the user'"'"'s friend'"'"'s with the two social networks that merges friends identified as the same.