SERVICES FOR PROVIDING ITEM ASSOCIATION DATA

• US 20130013749A1
• Filed: 09/15/2012
• Published: 01/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Brent R. Smith, Francis J. Kane Jr, Jocelyn M. Miller, Matthew T. Tavis, Shenbagakumaran Srinivasan
• Original Assignee: Brent R. Smith, Francis J. Kane Jr, Jocelyn M. Miller, Matthew T. Tavis, Shenbagakumaran Srinivasan
• Inventors: Smith, Brent R., Miller, Jocelyn M., Srinivasan, ShenbagaKumaran, Tavis, Matthew T., Kane, Francis J. Jr.
• Granted Patent: US 8,504,441 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/219
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0252 based on events or environment, e.g. weather or festivals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0253 During e-commerce, i.e. online transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0282 Rating or review of business operators or products
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

A service is disclosed for enabling web sites and other entities to provide item recommendations and other behavior-based content to end users. The service can be implemented as a web service that is remotely accessible over the Internet. Web sites use the web service'"'"'s interface to report events descriptive of item-related actions performed by end users (e.g., item views, item purchases, searches for items, etc.). The web service analyzes the reported event data on an aggregated basis to detect various types of associations between particular items, and stores resulting datasets that map items to associated items. The web service'"'"'s interface also provides various API calls for enabling the web sites to request item recommendations and other behavior-based content, including but not limited to personalized recommendations that are based on the event history of the target user. Advantageously, the web sites need not host the infrastructure for providing such content.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

receiving a data request from a client via a service interface, said data request identifying at least a first item, a first event type, and a second event type, said first and second event types corresponding to respective types of user events that can be performed with respect to particular items; and

responding to the data request by looking up and returning a list of associated items that have an association with the first item, said associations being based on a tendency of users who perform the first type of event on the first item to also perform the second type of event on another item.