Locally Hosting a Social Network Using Social Data Stored on a User's Computer

• US 20120089678A1
• Filed: 10/12/2011
• Published: 04/12/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/08/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yahoo Assets LLC
• Original Assignee: Xobni Corp. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Cort, Frank J., Hein, Brian, New, Jon
• Granted Patent: US 9,721,228 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

Systems and methods to host a social network locally on a user'"'"'s computing device using social data at the user device. In one embodiment, a method includes maintaining, on a local computing device of a user, social data regarding social relationships of the user in order to support a social network of the user; and hosting, via the local computing device, the social network.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

maintaining, on a local computing device of a user, social data regarding social relationships of the user in order to support a social network of the user; and

hosting, via the local computing device, the social network.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising in response to a request from a gadget for social data, providing to the gadget at least a portion of the social data maintained on the local computing device.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising implementing the social network on the local computing device and implementing a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for a web-based social network.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the set of APIs is implemented on the local computing device as a container.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

receiving, by the container, a request from a web browser for a gadget view of a gadget; and

in response to the request, sending HTML and Javascript from the container to the web browser in order to render the gadget.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the web browser and the gadget are each running on the local computing device.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the web browser is running on the local computing device, and the gadget is running on a remote computing device.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the local computing device is a user terminal, and further comprising hosting the set of APIs on the user terminal.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the hosting comprises providing access, via an OpenSocial application programming interface (API) implemented in a website, to the social network.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing, on the local computing device, all data for the social network regarding the user'"'"'s friends in the social network.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

running a gadget manager on the local computing device to control access to the local computing device by a plurality of gadgets; and

in response to a user input to a user interface of the gadget manager, changing the extent of exposure to data in the social network provided to a first gadget of the plurality of gadgets.

12. The method of claim 2, further comprising determining the social data by scanning data obtained from a corpus of email communications sent to and from the local computing device.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the scanning comprises scanning the email communications to build person profiles for each of a plurality of persons referenced in the email communications in at least one of a To, Cc, and Bcc field of an email.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising exposing data from the person profiles for friends of the user in response to a request from the gadget.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein the email communications are stored on the local computing device at the time of the scanning.

16. The method of claim 11, wherein the plurality of gadgets run on the local computing device.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

maintaining, on a different local computing device of the user, social data regarding different social relationships of the user in order to support a different social network of the user; and

hosting, via the different local computing device, the different social network.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing a user interface, running on the local computing device, to permit the user to adjust privacy settings in order to control access to the social data.

22. The method of claim 5, wherein the sending comprises sending social data along with the HTML and Javascript.

19. A user terminal, comprising:

a storage device to store a set of messages for a user, and to store social data regarding social relationships of the user for a social network of the user; and

at least one processor configured to update, locally on the user terminal, the social data in order to support the social network, and further to host, locally on the user terminal, the social network.

20. The user terminal of claim 19, further comprising a network builder to scan the set of messages to identify a plurality of primary persons addressed in the messages as a primary recipient and to identify a plurality of secondary persons addressed in the messages as a secondary recipient, and to map the primary persons to a plurality of friends and map the secondary persons to a plurality of other persons in order to infer social relationships for use in the social network.

21. A non-transitory machine readable storage media storing a set of instructions, the instructions to cause at least one processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

maintaining, on a local computing device of a user, social data regarding social relationships of the user in order to support a social network of the user; and

hosting, via the local computing device, the social network.