METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PERFORMING AN AUTHORITY ANALYSIS

• US 20110246520A1
• Filed: 01/10/2011
• Published: 10/06/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Salesforce.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Micucci, Mike, Koister, Jari
• Granted Patent: US 8,924,419 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/771
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/103 Workflow collaboration or project management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0282 Rating or review of business operators or products
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

Methods and systems for automatically determining, from a body of emails, blogs, and other documents, authors of the documents who are authorities on certain subjects, and what those subjects are. An intersection of the semantic footprints of documents by an author are deemed to be the derived skills footprint of the author. The derived skills footprints of many authors are compared with a user'"'"'s query to determine who is the best person that could respond to the user.

Claims

1. A method of recommending an authority on a subject, the method comprising:

analyzing documents authored by an author for their semantic footprints;

determining, using a processor operatively coupled to a memory, a first intersection of the documents'"'"' semantic footprints;

associating the first semantic footprint intersection with the author;

receiving a query from a user;

analyzing the query for its semantic footprint;

determining a second intersection, the second intersection being between the query'"'"'s semantic footprint and the first semantic footprint intersection; and

providing the user with information about the author based on an extent of the second intersection.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining from usage data of the documents that the documents are highly rated; and

based on the determination that the documents are highly rated, analyzing the documents for their semantic footprints.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein determining the first intersection and determining the second intersection are performed by a common algorithm.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining the extent of the second intersection from a ratio of the second intersection with a union of the query'"'"'s semantic footprint and first intersection.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the operations are performed in the order as shown.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein each operation is performed by the computer processor operatively coupled to the memory.

7. A computer system executing instructions in a computer program, the computer program instructions comprising program code for performing the operations of claim 1.

8. A machine-readable storage medium embodying information indicative of instructions for causing one or more machines to perform the operations of claim 1.

9. A method of determining an authoritative author on a subject, the method comprising:

receiving a set of documents, each document having a semantic footprint;

receiving user usage data for each of the documents;

assigning a rating to each of the documents using the respective semantic footprint and user usage data for each document;

determining a common author of highly rated documents having an intersecting semantic footprint to establish an authoritative author of a subject;

receiving a query from a user;

determining a semantic footprint of the query;

determining that the semantic footprint of the query intersects with the semantic footprints of the highly rated documents; and

providing the user with a name of the authoritative author based on a determination that the semantic footprint of the query intersects with the semantic footprints of the highly rated documents.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising:

determining the semantic footprint for each of the set of documents.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein determining the semantic footprint for each of the set of documents and determining the semantic footprint of the query are performed by a common algorithm.

12. The method of claim 9 wherein the documents are selected from the group consisting of web pages, presentations, Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) documents, instant messages, tweets, and emails.

13. The method of claim 9 wherein the user usage data for each document is selected from the group consisting of ratings from users, a number of users who have viewed the document, and a number of links to the document.

14. The method of claim 9 wherein the operations are performed in the order as shown.

15. The method of claim 9 wherein each operation is performed by the computer processor operatively coupled to the memory.

16. A computer system executing instructions in a computer program, the computer program instructions comprising program code for performing the operations of claim 9.

17. A machine-readable storage medium embodying information indicative of instructions for causing one or more machines to perform the operations of claim 9.