SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING CONTACTS OF A TARGET USER IN A SOCIAL NETWORK

• US 20140229406A1
• Filed: 10/29/2013
• Published: 08/14/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cognyte Technologies Israel Ltd. (Cognyte Software Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Verint Systems Limited (Verint Systems Incorporated)
• Inventors: Puzis, Rami, Stern, Roni
• Granted Patent: US 9,646,245 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/12
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2379 Updates performed during online database operations; commit processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/01 Dynamic search techniques; Heuristics; Dynamic trees; Branch-and-bound
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

When using Web intelligence (“Webint”) to collect information regarding a target social network user, one of the most valuable pieces of information is the target user'"'"'s List-Of-Friends (LOF). In some cases, however, the LOF of the target user is not accessible in his profile. Herein are described methods and systems for identifying the LOF of a target user. An analysis system crawls the profiles of social network users, other than the target user, and reconstructs the LOF of the target user from the crawled profiles.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving a request to identify a group of users of one or more social networks, who are defined as contacts of a target user of the social networks;

responsively to the request, analyzing one or more profiles of respective users of the social networks, other than the target user, and reconstructing the contacts of the target user from the analyzed profiles.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein a list of the contacts of the target user is inaccessible in a profile of the target user.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein analyzing the profiles comprises initially receiving a subset of the contacts of the target user, and expanding the subset by iteratively crawling the profiles of the contacts in the subset.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein analyzing the profiles comprises selecting a potential contact of the target user from among currently-known profiles, and, upon identifying that the potential contact is connected to the target user, adding the potential contact to the reconstructed group.

5. The method according to claim 4, and comprising, upon identifying that the potential contact is connected to the target user, retrieving the contacts of the potential contact and adding the profiles of the contacts of the potential contact to the currently-known profiles.

6. The method according to claim 5, and comprising iteratively selecting the potential contact, identifying whether the potential contact is connected to the target user and updating the currently-known profiles, until meeting a termination condition.

7. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises choosing the potential contact from among the currently-known profiles at random.

8. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises choosing an oldest profile among the currently-known profiles that is not previously selected.

9. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises choosing a profile having a maximum similarity in attribute values to the profile of the target user among the currently-known profiles.

10. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises choosing a profile that is connected to a contact of the target user that is connected to a largest number of the contacts of the target user.

11. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises defining first and second heuristics for selection of the potential contact, training a classifier to optimally combine the first and second heuristics using training data, and choosing the potential contact based on the optimally-combined heuristics.

12. The method according to claim 11, wherein training the classifier comprises testing a default heuristic over a given number of initial potential contacts of the target user to produce training results, and combining the first and second heuristics based on the training results.

13. The method according to claim 11, wherein training the classifier comprises combining the first and second heuristics based on one or more previous searches for LOFs of other target users.

14. The method according to claim 4, wherein selecting the potential contact comprises defining for each of the currently-known profiles a respective score that is indicative of a likelihood of the currently-known profile to be connected to a contact of the target user that is connected to other contacts of the target user, and choosing the potential contact based on respective scores of the currently-known profiles.

15. An apparatus, comprising:

an interface, which is configured to communicate with one or more social networks; and

a processor, which is configured to receive a request to identify a group of users of the social networks who are defined as contacts of a target user of the social networks, to analyze, responsively to the request, one or more profiles of respective users of the social networks other than the target user, and to reconstruct the contacts of the target user from the analyzed profiles.

16. The apparatus according to claim 15, wherein a list of the contacts of the target user is inaccessible in a profile of the target user.

17. The apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the processor is configured to initially receive a subset of the contacts of the target user, and to expand the subset by iteratively crawling the profiles of the contacts in the subset.

18. The apparatus according to claim 15, wherein the processor is configured to select a potential contact of the target user from among currently-known profiles, and, upon identifying that the potential contact is connected to the target user, to add the potential contact to the reconstructed group.

19. The apparatus according to claim 18, wherein, upon identifying that the potential contact is connected to the target user, the processor is configured to retrieve the contacts of the potential contact and to add the profiles of the contacts of the potential contact to the currently-known profiles.

20. The apparatus according to claim 19, wherein the processor is configured to iteratively select the potential contact, identify whether the potential contact is connected to the target user and update the currently-known profiles, until meeting a termination condition.