INTERACTIVE SEARCH RESULTS PAGE

• US 20120150972A1
• Filed: 12/14/2010
• Published: 06/14/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 12/14/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Morris, Meredith June, Counts, Scott Joseph, Roseway, Asta Jane, Schwarz, Julia
• Granted Patent: US 9,292,602 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/00 Information and communication technology [ICT] specially adapted for implementation of business processes of specific business sectors, e.g. utilities or tourism healthcare informatics G16H
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services

Abstract

Described herein are various technologies pertaining to presenting search results to a user, wherein the search results are messages generated by way of social networking applications. An interactive graphical object is presented together with retrieved messages, and messages are filtered responsive to interactions with the interactive graphical object. Additionally, a graphical object that is indicative of credibility of a message is presented together with the message.

Claims

1. A system comprising a plurality of components that are executable by a processor, the components comprising:

a receiver component that receives a query from a user;

a search component that performs a search over messages to output a plurality of retrieved messages based at least in part upon the query, wherein each of the messages in the plurality of messages comprises content and an identifiable author that generated the content;

a display component that causes a first set of messages from the plurality of messages to be displayed to the user, wherein the display component further causes at least one of the following graphical objects to be displayed to the user together with the first set of messages;

an interactive graphical object that is representative of content of the plurality of search results output by the search component, wherein selection of a portion of the first interactive graphical object causes the search component to refine the search and output a second set of messages from the plurality of messages based at least in part upon the selection of the portion of the interactive graphical object;

or

a graphical object that is representative of a computed credibility of at least one author of at least one of the messages displayed to the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the search component comprises a selector component that selects which messages to present to the user based at least in part upon at least one of an amount of diversity between content of the messages in the plurality of messages, an amount of diversity in sentiment across the messages in the plurality of messages, or an amount of diversity across features of authors of the messages in the plurality of messages.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the display component comprises a keyword analyzer component that locates phrases that co-occur across messages in the plurality of messages, wherein the interactive graphical object is a phrase cloud that indicates to the user the phrases that co-occur across the messages in the plurality of messages, and wherein user selection of a phrase in the phrase cloud causes the search component to filter the plurality of messages based at least in part upon the phrase.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the display component comprises a sentiment determiner component that analyzes content of messages in the plurality of messages and determines a sentiment for each message in the plurality of messages, and wherein the interactive graphical object comprises indications of sentiment of messages in the plurality of messages located by the search components, and wherein selection of a particular sentiment represented in the first graphical object causes the search component to filter the plurality of messages based at least in part upon the particular sentiment.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the interactive graphical object is representative of volume of messages with respect to time and sentiment.

6. The system of claim 4, wherein the interactive graphical object is representative of volume of messages with respect to geographic region and sentiment.

7. The system of claim 4, wherein the interactive graphical object is representative of volume of messages with respect to time, geographic region, and sentiment.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the display component causes the interactive graphical object and the graphical object to be simultaneously displayed to the user.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the messages comprise messages broadcast by users of a message broadcasting social networking application.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the messages comprise messages selected from a public data feed of a social networking service.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the display component comprises a credibility determiner component that computes a measure of credibility pertaining to at least one message displayed to the user based at least in part upon a number of messages generated by an author of the at least one message on a topic of the at least one message, a number of subscribers or contacts of the author in a social networking application utilized to generate the at least one message, and a number of rebroadcasts of messages generated by the author.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the display component comprises a hover detector component that determines that the user is utilizing a mouse pointer to hover over at least one message, wherein responsive to the hover detector component determining that the user is utilizing the mouse pointer to hover over the at least one message, the display component displays biographical information for the at least one author to the user.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the biographical information comprises location of the at least one author, a number of messages generated by the at least one author through utilization of a social networking application, a number of followers of the at least one author, and graphical indicia of sentiment of messages generated by the at least one author.

14. A method comprising,

receiving a query from a user;

searching over a plurality of messages generated by way of one or more social networking applications based at least in part upon the query;

locating a subset of the plurality of messages based at least in part upon the searching; and

displaying the subset of messages to the user together with graphical objects that are indicative of respective computed credibility of messages in the subset of messages, wherein the computed credibility of a message is based at least in part upon a number of followers of an author of the message, a number of messages generated by the author of the message, and a number of redistributions of messages generated by the author.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the messages are broadcasts generated by authors by way of a message broadcasting application.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the messages are posted by authors to public data streams of a social networking application.

17. The method of claim 14, further comprising displaying an interactive graphical object simultaneously with the subset of messages, wherein interaction with the interactive graphical object causes messages presented to the user to alter.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the interactive graphical object comprises selectable phrases, wherein selection of a selectable phrase causes the messages to be filtered based at last in part upon the selectable phrase.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein the interactive graphical object comprises a selectable map that indicates message volume by geographic location, wherein selection of a portion of the map causes the messages to be filtered based at least in part upon a geographic location corresponding to the portion of the map.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform acts comprising:

a) receiving an indication from a user that the user wishes to search over messages broadcast by authors by way of a social networking broadcast application;

b) receiving a query from the user;

c) based at least in part upon the indication received at a) and the query received at b), locating a plurality of messages broadcast by a plurality of different authors;

d) displaying a first set of messages to the user, wherein the first set of messages is selected from the plurality of messages located at c);

e) displaying to the user an interactive graphical object that is representative of content across the plurality of messages located at c);

f) displaying to the user a graphical object that is indicative of credibility of at least one message in the first set of messages displayed to the user at d);

g) receiving a selection of a portion of the interactive graphical object displayed at e); and

h) responsive to receiving the selection of the portion of the interactive graphical object at g), displaying a second set of messages to the user, wherein the second set of messages is selected from the plurality of messages located at c).