PRESENTING SUPPLEMENTAL CONTENT IN CONTEXT

• US 20120330932A1
• Filed: 08/31/2012
• Published: 12/27/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/07/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: boyd, danah, Lotan, Gilad, Oka, Paul, Kiciman, Emre Mehmet, Wang, Chun-Kai
• Granted Patent: US 10,331,744 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/722
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9536 Search customisation based on social or collaborative filtering

Abstract

Techniques that may be used for detecting a primary content (e.g., a web page) that the user is viewing and presenting one or more pieces of supplemental content (e.g., social media data) together with the primary content. The supplemental content presented to the user together with the primary content may be content that is matched to the primary content and therefore detected to be relevant to the user. Detection of primary content and matching to supplemental content may be carried out based on a comparison of entities related to the primary and supplemental content. In some embodiments, an analysis of the primary content for entities may include ordering entities according to significance in the primary content and selecting top entities for comparison. Also, in some embodiments, multiple pieces of supplemental content may be displayed to a user categorized based on entity.

Claims

1. A method for displaying at least a portion of available supplemental content in context, the method comprising:

identifying an ordered set of one or more first entities relating to primary content that a user is experiencing, the ordered set being ordered according at least in part to a significance of each first entity in the primary content; and

for a first entity in the ordered set,

identifying at least one unit of available supplemental content that relates to the first entity, and

displaying to the user as supplemental content, together with the primary content, the at least one unit of available supplemental content.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the available supplemental content comprises distributed content to which the user has subscribed.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the distributed content to which the user has subscribed comprises social network data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying comprises:

analyzing the primary content that a user is viewing to determine at least one potential first entity related to the primary content; and

ordering at least some of the at least one potential first entity to yield the ordered set of one or more first entities.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the ordering according to a significance of each first entity comprises ordering the one or more first entities according to at least one of a position of each first entity in the primary content, number of occurrences of each first entity in the primary content, and, for textual entities, capitalization of each first entity.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the ordering according to a significance of each first entity comprises:

analyzing the primary content to determine a structure of the primary content; and

inferring a significance of each first entity from a placement of the first entity in the structure of the primary content.

7. The method of claim 4, wherein analyzing the primary content comprises:

identifying an entity to which the primary content relates;

canonicalizing the entity to determine a root entity for the entity;

when a root entity has multiple meanings, analyzing at least one other root entity for the primary content to determine a context in which the root entity is used; and

identifying the root entity as a first entity related to the primary content.

8. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

retrieving social media data from at least one source of social media data;

analyzing each unit of the social media data to determine, for each unit, at least one first entity related to the unit.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving an input from a user specifying at least one source of supplemental content; and

retrieving data from each of the at least one source of supplemental content to yield the available supplemental content.

10. At least one computer-readable storage medium encoded with computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to carry out a method comprising:

retrieving social media data from at least one source of social media data;

analyzing each unit of the social media data to determine, for each unit, at least one first entity related to the unit;

analyzing primary content that a user is experiencing to determine at least one second entity related to the primary content;

ordering the at least one second entity to yield an ordered set of one or more second entities, the ordered set being ordered according to a significance of each second entity in the primary content; and

for each second entity in the ordered set,

identifying a first entity that matches the second entity,

selecting, from the social media data, at least one particular unit of social media data that is related to a first entity, and

displaying to the user as supplemental content, together with the primary content, the at least one particular unit of social media data categorized by the second entity.

11. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein analyzing the primary content comprises analyzing a web page, and

wherein analyzing to determine the at least one second entity comprises analyzing to determine entities mentioned in text of the web page.

12. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein ordering according to a significance of each second entity comprises, for at least one second entity:

inferring a significance of the at least one second entity based at least in part on whether the at least one second entity relates to a general interest of the user.

13. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the ordering according to a significance of each second entity comprises, for at least one second entity:

identifying a source of a unit of social media data related to the at least one second entity; and

determining a significance of the second entity based at least in part on the source of the unit of social media data.

14. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the method further comprises:

identifying an entity to which the primary content relates;

canonicalizing the entity to determine a root entity for the entity;

when a root entity has multiple meanings, analyzing at least one other root entity for the primary content to determine a context in which the root entity is used; and

identifying the root entity as a first entity related to the primary content.

15. The at least one computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the method further comprises:

receiving an input from a user specifying at least one source of social media data; and

retrieving data from each of the at least one source of social media data to yield the social media data.

16. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor adapted to display at least a portion of available supplemental content in context by;

identifying an ordered set of one or more first entities relating to primary content that a user is experiencing, the ordered set being ordered according at least in part according to a significance of each first entity in the ordered set; and

for a first entity in the ordered set,

identifying at least one unit of available supplemental content that relates to the first entity, and

displaying to the user as supplemental content, together with the primary content, the at least one unit of available supplemental content, the at least one unit being categorized by the first entity.

17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the at least one processor is adapted to order the at least one first entity according to a significance of each first entity by:

analyzing the primary content to determine a structure of the primary content; and

inferring a significance of each second entity from a placement of the second entity in the structure of the primary content.

18. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the at least one processor is adapted to identify the one or more first entities by:

analyzing the primary content that a user is viewing to determine at least one first entity related to the primary content; and

ordering at least a portion of the at least one first entity to yield the ordered set of one or more first entities.

19. The apparatus of claim 16, further comprising:

at least one network adapter to receive data from at least one other computing device via a communication network,

wherein the at least one processor is adapted to identify the one or more first entities by identifying a set of entities received by the at least one network adapter from at least one other computing device as the one or more first entities.