REAL-TIME AND INTERACTIVE COMMUNITY-BASED CONTENT PUBLISHING SYSTEM

• US 20130290516A1
• Filed: 04/30/2012
• Published: 10/31/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: CBS Interactive Inc. (ViacomCBS Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: CBS Interactive Inc. (ViacomCBS Incorporated)
• Inventors: EATON, Steven, Goodlett, Ryan, Hobbs, Daniel Gould, Lwanga, Jeremy
• Granted Patent: US 8,990,325 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/224
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

A system and method is provided to enable clients to interact with a content resource (e.g., a webpage) in real-time, so that contributions from each client is communicated to the other clients in real-time.

Claims

1. A method for providing interactive content from a content provider in real-time, the method being implemented by one or more processors and comprising:

(a) establishing a real-time connection with each client in a community of clients, the real-time connection being established in context of a content resource being provided to the community of clients from a content provider;

(b) detecting an event corresponding to a content submission from one or more of the clients in the community;

(c) in response to detecting the event, sending a communication to each client in the community using the real-time connection with that client, so that each client is able to update a content resource provided from the content provider to include one or more changes that reflect the content submission.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein (a) includes establishing a websocket connection.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein (c) includes associating one or more properties with the communication that indicate how each client is to implement a change specified by the corresponding content submission.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein associating one or more properties with the communication includes identifying a user or class of user that provided the content submission.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising providing each client of the community with a set of rules that dictate how each client is to handle any given communication, corresponding to a particular content submission from a client in the community, based on one or more properties associated with the communication.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein at least some of the clients of the community correspond to a browser.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least some of the clients of the community implement a script that enables that client to establish the real-time connection with the content provider.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the content resource corresponds to a webpage that receives entries from one or more of the clients in the community.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the content resource includes a message thread, and wherein (a) through (c) is performed for a discrete duration in order to enable an addition to the message thread to be presented in real-time to all of the clients during the discrete duration.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the content resource includes submissions provided from two or more clients of the community, each submission being responsive to a topic or question, and wherein (c) includes providing each of the submissions in one or more communications that are sent to the clients using the real-time connections.

11. A method for providing a debate forum in real-time, the method being implemented by one or more processors and comprising:

predetermining one or more content contributors that are to have a select class designation for contributing content to the debate forum;

for a discrete time-period, detecting a plurality of content submissions provided from multiple clients of a community for the debate forum, wherein each of the multiple clients has a particular class designation;

in response to detecting each of the plurality of content submissions, providing a communication to the clients of the community that includes the content submission in real-time, and providing one or more properties with the communication that identifies the class designation of the client that provided the content submission.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising establishing a real-time connection with each of a plurality of a clients that comprise a community for the debate forum, and wherein providing the communication to the clients of the community includes using the real-time connection that is established with each of the plurality of clients.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein establishing the real-time connection includes establishing a websocket connection.

14. The method of claim 11, further comprising setting a start time and an end time that defines the discrete duration, and wherein providing the communication to the clients in response to detecting each of the plurality of content submissions is performed in real-time during the discrete duration.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein predetermining one or more content contributors that are to have the select class designation includes predetermining one or more clients as having a debater class designation, and one or more clients has giving a debate monitor class designation, and wherein communications are provided to the clients in response to a content submission being received by clients that have the debater class designation or debate monitor class designation.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising communicating messages, corresponding to content submissions from the one or more clients with the debater class designation and the debate monitor class designation, to the clients of the community with properties that identify a location in a webpage for displaying content from each of the content submissions.

17. The method of claim 11, wherein each of the multiple clients of the community includes a browser that operates on a corresponding terminal.

18. The method of claim 11, further comprising:

providing each of the multiple clients with an interface for establishing a real-time connection with the content provider, and

establishing the real-time connection with each of the clients, using the respective interface of each client.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein providing each of the multiple clients with the interface includes providing a browser, corresponding to each client, with a script that executes to provide the respective interface.

20. A computer system for providing interactive content in real-time, the computer system comprising:

a memory that stores a set of instructions;

one or more processors that use instructions from the set of instructions, in order to;

establish a real-time connection with each client in a community of clients, the real-time connection being established in context of a content resource being provided to the community of clients from a content provider;

detect an event corresponding to a content submission from one or more of the clients in the community;

in response to detecting the event, send a communication to each client in the community using the real-time connection with that client, so that each client is able to update the content resource to include one or more changes that reflect the content submission.