SOCIAL MESSAGING HUB

• US 20110238766A1
• Filed: 05/19/2011
• Published: 09/29/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 08/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: HeyWire, Inc. (Salesforce.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Eugene Lee Lew, Vasileios John Gianoukos
• Inventors: Gianoukos, Vasileios John, Lew, Eugene Lee
• Granted Patent: US 8,918,085 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2101/65 Telephone numbers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/10 Multimedia information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/58 Message adaptation for wireless communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/106 across networks, e.g. mapping telephone numbers to data network addresses
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/20 Services signaling; Auxiliary data signalling, i.e. transmitting data via a non-traffic channel
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/21 for social networking applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/26 Network addressing or numbering for mobility support

Abstract

A social messaging hub provides communication services for a data enabled device having Internet network access capabilities such as a portable media player, personal digital assistant, a Wi-Fi mobile platform, a tablet computer, portable e-Reader, a personal computer, a laptop and a netbook computer. The social messaging hub communicates with the data enabled device over the Internet or cellular data networks, and interfaces with a message infrastructure including mobile carriers, message aggregators, message exchanges and various specialized social messaging services, such as Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Facebook and Twitter to enable bi-directional messaging communication. The user is given a registered phone number and unique IP addressable identification which serve as a source and destination identifier of the associated data enabled device. Messages may originate in or be delivered to other users'"'"' mobile telephones or in similarly equipped and provisioned IP data enabled devices.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for messaging communications with a data enabled device, the method comprising:

obtaining a plurality of unique identifiers;

assigning to a user of the data enabled device a unique identifier from the plurality of unique identifiers;

associating the unique identifier with a data enabled device identifier;

registering the unique identifier to data enabled device identifier association in a database;

receiving a message from a message source through a message service directed to the user'"'"'s data enabled device having the registered unique identifier obtained from the message source;

providing the message using the database to identify the destination of message to an inbound service;

establishing a connection between a data enabled device and the inbound service; and

pushing the message from the inbound service to an application running on the data enabled device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the message service includes one of:

a Short Message Service (SMS) providing short alphanumeric messages;

an Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS) providing enhanced short alphanumeric messages; and

a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) providing multimedia messages.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data enabled device identifier includes one of:

a network address;

a Unique Device Identifier (UDID);

a Media Access Control address (MAC address);

an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI);

a Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID);

an Electronic Serial Number (ESN); and

a CPU serial number.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising delivering the message to the inbound service through one of:

a Short Message Service Center (SMSC);

an SMS aggregator;

an SMS gateway; and

an IM message server; and

wherein the source of the message is one of;

a messaging community;

a social community; and

a content provider.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a message from the data enabled device including a destination identifier for the message;

processing the message in an SMS provider;

providing the message to the message service for delivery to the message recipient indicated by a SMS destination identifier; and

wherein the message is an SMS message.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the destination of the message is one of:

a Short Message Service (SMS) operator;

an SMS aggregator;

a messaging community;

a social community; and

a content provider.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the data enabled device includes one of:

a portable media player;

a personal digital assistant;

a Wi-Fi mobile platform;

a tablet computer;

a portable e-Reader;

a personal computer;

a portable game player;

a game console;

a laptop;

a television set; and

a netbook computer.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the application is one of a browser and a smart phone app.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of unique identifiers includes at least one of a plurality of:

telephone numbers;

Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs);

Media Access Control addresses (MAC addresses);

Mobile Equipment Identifier (MEID);

Electronic Serial Number (ESN);

CPU serial number; and

International Mobile Equipment Identities (IMEIs).

10. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning to a user of the data enabled device a unique identifier further comprises creating a User login account for logging onto a social messaging Hub application.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning further comprises registering the application to receive push notifications.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein pushing the message from the inbound service further comprises creating a push notification from the database and the message;

and

the method further comprising forwarding the push notification to a notification queue.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising consolidating message delivery into a common message conversation queue;

and

intermixing messages from other messaging services, including presence activity data and geographic location into the common message conversation queue.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the source of the message is Twitter, the message is a Tweet and the message delivery is independent of national country borders and carrier networks;

and

further comprising operating a Twitter service coupled through a Twitter API to receive Tweets.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the messaging communication is instant messaging (IM).

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the IM messaging communication is one of:

AIM;

Yahoo Messenger;

Windows Live Messenger;

Jabber;

Skype;

Tencent QQ;

ICQ; and

GoogleTalk.

17. The method of claim 13, wherein the source of the message is Facebook, and further comprising sending one of an SMS message and a Facebook chat/IM message using the unique identifier from a Facebook application.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the destination of the message is Facebook, and further comprising in a Facebook application, receiving and viewing the message directed to the unique identifier.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the message is an IM message and further comprising:

receiving the IM message from the data enabled device including a destination identifier for the message;

processing the message in an IM service; and

providing the message to the message service for delivery to the message recipient indicated by the destination identifier.

20. A social messaging hub for Short Message Service/Multimedia Messaging Service/Enhanced Messaging Service (SMS/MMS/EMS) communications comprising:

an SMS provider;

an inbound service coupled to the SMS provider;

a database coupled to the inbound service and a web server;

a Hub application operating on the web server and comprising a plurality of message services; and

a plurality of message service application programming interfaces coupled to corresponding ones of the plurality of message services.

21. The social messaging hub of claim 20, wherein the data push server comprises an interface to a push notification server, a notification queue, and a queue listener.

22. The social messaging hub of claim 20, further comprising a common message conversation queue.

23. The social messaging hub of claim 20, wherein the Hub application comprises:

a Representational State Transfer (REST) service coupled to the web server; and

a data push server coupled to the REST service.