APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR MANAGING A SOCIAL NETWORK

• US 20110126253A1
• Filed: 11/20/2009
• Published: 05/26/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Chang, E-Lee, Sung, Ja-Young, ROBERTS, LINDA, King, Robert Arthur, Schultz, Natasha Barrett
• Granted Patent: US 9,100,550 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 725/114
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/21 Design, administration or maintenance of databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/252 between a Database Management System and a front-end application
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/20 Education
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4438 Window management, e.g. event handling following interaction with the user interface
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4722 for requesting additional data associated with the content
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8173 End-user applications, e.g. Web browser, game
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17327 with deferred transmission or handling of upstream communications

Abstract

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a system having a controller to collect one or more user-generated comments from each of a plurality of computing devices, detect a correlation in the one or more user-generated comments collected from the plurality of computing devices, and establish a social network between the plurality of computing devices according to the detected correlation. The one or more user-generated comments can be temporally associated with media content presented at the plurality of computing devices. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

presenting an overlay combined with a presentation of media content at each of a plurality of computing devices to illustrate commentaries temporally associated with portions of the presented media content;

collecting a plurality of commentaries from each of the plurality of computing devices;

detecting in the plurality of commentaries one or more clusters of correlated commentaries; and

detecting an educational aspect in each of the one or more clusters of correlated commentaries.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising establishing one or more clusters of educational social networks responsive to detecting the education aspect.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein each social network cluster comprises a cluster of computing devices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein each cluster of correlated commentaries exhibits an educational behavior.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising sharing commentaries between the computing devices.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the educational aspect corresponds to a behavioral pattern exhibiting a lack of understanding in at least a portion of the media content.

7. The method of claim 6, comprising:

detecting the behavioral pattern from a recognition of keywords, phrases, recorded speech, or drawings in the one or more clusters of correlated commentaries; and

submitting a notification to a system presenting the media content, wherein the notification indicates the lack of understanding in at least the portion of the media content.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the educational aspect corresponds to a behavioral pattern exhibiting an understanding in at least a portion of the media content.

9. The method of claim 8, comprising:

detecting the behavioral pattern from a recognition of keywords, phrases, recorded speech, or drawings in the one or more clusters of correlated commentaries; and

submitting a notification to a system presenting the media content, wherein the notification indicates the understanding in at least the portion of the media content.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising:

detecting from one of the clusters of correlated commentaries a degree of understanding in at least a portion of the media content; and

submitting a notification that describes the detected degree of understanding in at least the portion of the media content.

11. The method of claim 10, comprising transmitting the notification responsive to detecting that the degree of understanding is equal to, exceeds, or is below a threshold.

12. The method of claim 1, comprising presenting in the overlay one or more iconic symbols descriptive of the one or more commentaries, wherein each iconic symbol differs in appearance, and each iconic symbol portrays a different educational meaning, and wherein the method comprises sharing the one or more iconic symbols between the computing devices.

13. The method of claim 2, comprising:

detecting a decorrelation of future commentaries collected from the plurality of computing devices in one of the social networks; and

terminating a portion of the social network according to the detected decorrelation.

14. A computer-readable storage medium, comprising computer instructions to:

collect a plurality of commentaries from each of the plurality of computing devices, wherein each of the plurality of commentaries is temporally associated with portions of presented media content;

detect in the plurality of commentaries one or more clusters of correlated commentaries; and

identify educational trends from the one or more clusters of correlated commentaries.

15. The storage medium of claim 14, comprising computer instructions to establish one or more clusters of social networks according to the detected trends.

16. The storage medium of claim 14, comprising computer instructions to share commentaries between the computing devices.

17. The storage medium of claim 14, computer instructions to submit a notification to a system presenting the media content, wherein the notification comprises the education trend, and wherein the education trend indicates one of an understanding or lack of understanding in at least a portion of the media content.

18. A computing device, comprising a controller to:

present an overlay combined with a presentation of media content to illustrate commentaries temporally associated with portions of the presented media content; and

receive an invitation to a social network of one or more other computing devices that generated commentaries temporally associated with the presented media content and that educationally correlate to commentaries generated by the computing device.

19. The computing device of claim 18, wherein the social network includes users sharing one of an understanding in the portion of the presented media content, a lack of understanding in the portion of the presented media content, or a combination thereof.

20. The computing device of claim 18, wherein the controller is operable to share commentaries generated thereby with the one or more other computing devices in the social network, and wherein at least a portion of the presented media content is educational.