GENERATING ACTIVITIES BASED UPON SOCIAL DATA

• US 20150193502A1
• Filed: 03/19/2015
• Published: 07/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Kiciman, Emre Mehmet, Wang, Chun-Kai, Wang, Yi-Min
• Granted Patent: US 10,963,461 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2455 Query execution
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0251 Targeted advertisements

Abstract

Technologies described herein relate to receiving data from a social networking application, wherein the data is generated by a first individual, and executing an entity extraction algorithm to extract at least one entity from the received data. A hyperlink is displayed on a computing device utilized by a second individual, wherein the hyperlink is based at least in part upon the at least one entity, and the hyperlink is configured to direct the first individual to a search engine and is further configured to cause the search engine to execute a search that pertains to the at least one entity.

Claims

1. A method comprising the following computer-executable acts:

extracting an entity from social networking data of a user, the entity comprising a keyword and a disambiguated canonical meaning of the keyword;

selecting an activity from amongst a plurality of possible activities based upon the entity extracted from the social networking data of the user, the activity performable with respect to the entity;

transmitting information that is indicative of the activity to a computing device of the user, the information transmitted for presentment to the user by way of an output interface of the computing device; and

performing at least one computing operation in response to receipt of an indication that the user wishes to pursue the activity with respect to the entity.

2. The method of claim 1, the activity related to acquisition of information about the entity, the at least one computing operation being execution of a search to acquire the information, the method further comprising causing the information to be presented to the user by way of the output interface of the computing device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the at least one computing operation comprises:

causing a search engine to execute a search for the entity; and

transmitting information based upon the search to the computing device of the user.

4. The method of claim 1, the output interface being a display of the computing device, wherein transmitting the indication that is indicative of the activity to the computing device of the user comprises transmitting a hyperlink for presentment on the display, and wherein performing the at least one computing operation comprises performing the at least one computing operation in response to receipt of an indication that the user has selected the hyperlink.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating the plurality of possible activities based upon queries previously submitted to a search engine, the queries comprise the keyword.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein transmitting the information that is indicative of the activity of the computing device of the user comprises causing a hyperlink to be displayed on a display of the computing device together with the social networking data when the user logs into a social networking application to view the social networking data on the computing device.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

accessing the social networking data from a social networking application, the social networking data is a status message update posted to the social networking application by a second user, wherein the second user is a contact of the user in the social networking application.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein extracting the entity from the social networking data of the user comprises:

extracting the keyword from the social networking data; and

determining the canonical meaning of the keyword based upon a context in which the keyword appears in the social networking data.

9. The method of claim 1, the entity is a geographic location, and wherein performing the at least one computing operation comprises transmitting data to the computing device of the user that causes a map pertaining to the geographic location to be presented on a display of the computing device.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting the activity from amongst the plurality of possible activities based upon the entity extracted from the social networking data of the user comprises:

selecting the activity from amongst the plurality of possible activities based upon known or inferred interests of the user.

11. A computing system comprising:

at least one processor; and

memory that comprises instructions that are executed by the at least one processor, the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform acts comprising;

selecting an activity from amongst a plurality of predefined activities based upon an entity extracted from social networking data of a user, the entity comprising a keyword in the social networking data of the user and a canonical meaning of the keyword; and

causing information that is indicative of the activity to be transmitted to a computing device of the user for presentment to the user by way of an output interface of the computing device; and

in response to receipt of an indication that the user wishes to pursue the activity, performing at least one computing operation that pertains to the activity.

12. The computing system of claim 11, wherein performing the at least one computing operation comprises executing a search based upon the entity extracted from the social networking data of the user.

13. The computing system of claim 11, wherein selecting the activity from amongst the plurality of predefined activities comprises:

ranking the plurality of predefined activities based upon the entity extracted from the social networking data of the user; and

selecting the activity based upon the ranking of the plurality of predefined activities, the activity being the most highly ranked amongst the plurality of predefined activities.

14. The computing system of claim 11, wherein selecting the activity from amongst the plurality of predefined activities comprises:

comparing a category assigned to the entity extracted from the social networking data of the user with a category assigned to the activity; and

selecting the activity based upon the category assigned to the entity matching the category assigned to the activity.

15. The computing system of claim 11, wherein causing the information that is indicative of the activity to be transmitted to the computing device of the user comprises causing a hyperlink to be presented on a display of the computing device, the hyperlink representative of the activity, the acts further comprising:

performing the at least one computing operation that pertains to the activity in response to receiving an indication that the user has selected the hyperlink on the display of the computing device.

16. The computing system of claim 15, wherein the social networking data is a message generated by a second user by way of a social networking application, the user and the second user are contacts in the social networking application, and the message accessible to the user by way of the social networking application.

17. The computing system of claim 16, wherein causing the information that is indicative of the activity to be transmitted to the computing device of the user comprises causing the hyperlink to be presented with the message when the message is accessed by the user by way of the social networking application.

18. The computing system of claim 11, the information that is indicative of the activity being a template phrase that is populated with the entity.

19. The computing system of claim 11, the acts further comprising:

extracting the entity from the social networking data of the user, wherein extracting the entity comprises;

extracting the keyword from the social networking data of the user; and

identifying the canonical meaning of the keyword based upon at least one of a known interest of the user or context in which the keyword appears in the social networking data.

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

based upon an entity extracted from a social networking message posted by a contact of a user, identifying an activity from amongst a plurality of pre-defined activities, the activity relates to acquisition of information about the entity, the entity being a keyword in the social networking message and a canonical meaning of the keyword;

in response to receipt of an indication from a computing device of the user that the user wishes to pursue the activity, executing a search for the entity to acquire the information; and

causing the information to be transmitted to the computing device of the user for presentment to the user by way of an output interface of the computing device.