DEFINING A SOCIAL NETWORK MODEL IMPLIED BY COMMUNICATIONS DATA

• US 20150222719A1
• Filed: 02/06/2015
• Published: 08/06/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 07/08/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Verizon Patent and Licensing Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hein, Brian, New, Jon
• Granted Patent: US 9,800,679 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Systems and methods to define a social network for a user using data implied by communications of the user with others. In one embodiment, a method includes scanning messages to identify persons addressed in the messages; computing scores of the persons to determine a relevancy of each person; receiving, by a first computing device, a request from a computer program running on a second computing device; in response to the request from the computer program, providing access to friend data for the persons, the computer program to provide services based on the friend data; and sending the friend data to the second computing device

Claims

1-15. -15. (canceled)

16. A method, comprising:

scanning a plurality of messages to identify a plurality of persons addressed in the messages;

computing scores of the persons to determine a relevancy of each person to a user;

defining a first social network model based on the persons;

receiving, by a first computing device, a request from a computer program running on a second computing device, the second computing device storing a second social network model that is different from the first social network model;

in response to the request from the computer program, providing access to friend data for the persons based on the first social network model, the computer program to provide services based on the friend data; and

sending, from the first computing device, the friend data to the second computing device.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the computer program provides the services based on friend data for a relevant context.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the friend data is different for each context in which the services are provided.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the access exposes the friend data for a top-ranked number of the persons based on the relevancy of the persons to the user as determined by the scores.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising building person profiles for each of the persons, wherein the friend data sent to the second computing device comprises data from the person profiles for the top-ranked persons.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein each of the plurality of persons is addressed in at least one of the messages as a recipient.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein each recipient is listed in a To field of an email.

23. The method of claim 16, wherein the defining of the first social network model is performed without manual input from the user regarding each of the persons.

24. The method of claim 16, further comprising implementing the first social network model with a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for a web-based social network application.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the set of APIs is implemented as a container.

26. The method of claim 24, further comprising hosting the set of APIs on the first computing device.

27. A computing device, comprising:

a storage device to store messages and to store a first social network model;

a network builder to scan the messages to identify a plurality of persons addressed in the messages, to build person profiles for each of the persons, and to compute scores of the persons to determine a relevancy of each person to a user; and

at least one processor configured to;

select some of the persons for a friends category of the first social network model based on the scores;

receive a request from an application running on a different computing device;

in response to the request from the application, provide access to social data for the persons that are in the friends category, the application to provide services based on the social data, the social data being different for each context in which the services are provided; and

send the social data to the different computing device, the social data comprising data from the person profiles.

28. The computing device of claim 27, wherein the different computing device stores a second social network model that is different from the first social network model.

29. The computing device of claim 27, wherein the access exposes social data for a top-ranked number of the persons based on the relevancy of the persons to the user as determined by the scores.

30. The computing device of claim 27, wherein the computing the scores of the persons is based at least in part on content in the messages.

31. The computing device of claim 27, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to define the first social network model based on the persons.

32. A non-transitory machine readable storage media storing a set of instructions, the instructions to cause at least one processor to:

scan a plurality of messages to identify a plurality of persons addressed in the messages as a recipient;

compute scores of the persons to determine a relevancy of each person to a user of a first computing device;

select persons for a friends category of the first social network model based on the scores;

receive, by the at least one processor, a request from software running on a second computing device, the second computing device storing a second social network model that is different from the first social network model;

in response to the request from the software, provide access to friend data for the persons selected for the friends category, the software to provide services based on the friend data, and the access exposing data for a top-ranked number of the selected persons based on the relevancy of the persons to the user as determined by the scores; and

send the friend data to the second computing device.

33. The non-transitory machine readable storage media of claim 32, wherein the instructions further cause the at least one processor to build person profiles for each of the persons.

34. The non-transitory machine readable storage media of claim 33, wherein the friend data comprises data from the person profiles for those of the selected persons that are direct contacts.

35. The non-transitory machine readable storage media of claim 33, wherein the instructions further cause the at least one processor to provide access to social data from the first social network model for a software application running on a third computing device that is an application server.