Relevancy rating of tags

• US 7,953,736 B2
• Filed: 01/04/2008
• Issued: 05/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/04/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: III Holdings 2, LLC
• Original Assignee: Intersect PTP, Inc.
• Inventors: Speckman, Erik, Rinearson, Peter
• Primary Examiner(s): LEROUX, ETIENNE PIERRE
• Application Number:
  US11/969,407
• Publication Number:
  US 20080168055A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,243 Days
• Field of Search: 707/3, 707/5, 707/200, 707/736, 715/513
• US Class Current: 707/736
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

A content item may be associated with metadata comprising one or more tags. A user may indicate a relevance rating associated with a tag. The relevance rating may indicate whether the user feels the tag is relevant to a particular content item. Using a plurality of user-provided relevance ratings, a tag relevance model may be established. A tag relevance model may comprise a weighted or un-weighted average and/or median relevance rating of the tag and/or a consistency of the relevance rating. The tag relevance model may be used to order or otherwise inform search results. Tag ratings may also be used to aggregate users into groups comprising users having a similar point of view relative to one or more tag ratings. In addition, users may be grouped according to content access and/or tags rated regardless of the relevance rating applied.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising program code for causing a computer to perform a method for creating a user community consensus of the relevance of a metadata tag to a content item, the method comprising:

receiving a metadata tag submitted by a first user of the user community the metadata tag describing an associated content item;

receiving a plurality of relevance ratings of the metadata tag submitted by the first user from other users of the user community, the metadata tag relevance ratings each rating the relevance of the metadata tag as pertaining to the associated content item, each user having a respective rating weight that determines the weight afforded to ratings of the user relative to other users in the user community;

weighting the relevance ratings submitted by the users relative to one another based on the respective rating weights of the users;

calculating an average relevance rating of the metadata tag using the weighted relevance ratings; and

storing the relevance ratings and the average relevance rating of the metadata tag.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the method further comprising:

assigning a rating weight to the first user based on relevance ratings of metadata tags submitted by the first user received from the other users of the user community; and

calculating an average relevance rating of a first metadata tag rated by the first user using the rating weight assigned to the first user.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the method further comprising:

calculating a respective consistency level of relevance ratings of each of a plurality of metadata tags submitted by users in the user community; and

identifying controversial metadata tags using the consistency levels of the relevance ratings of the metadata tags.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein calculating the consistency level comprises calculating a deviation of the plurality of relevance ratings of the particular metadata tag.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the method further comprising:

calculating a respective consistency level of relevance ratings of each of a plurality of metadata tags submitted by users in the user community; and

providing a user interface to display a particular one of the metadata tags, the content item associated with the particular metadata tag, and an indicator of the consistency level of the relevance ratings of the particular metadata tag.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the method further comprising:

associating each of a plurality of metadata tag relevance ratings submitted by users in the user community with respective user accounts of the users;

identifying two or more users having a similar aesthetic taste based on the metadata tag relevance ratings associated with the user accounts of the two or more users; and

adding user accounts of the two or more identified users to a first user group.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 6, the method further comprising adding one or more user accounts to a second user group based on the respective users rating metadata tags associated with similar content items.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the method further comprising:

calculating a respective consistency level of relevance ratings of each of a plurality of metadata tags submitted by users in the user community; and

ordering a search result comprising a plurality of content items based on a relevance rating consistency level of one or more metadata tags assigned to the content items in the search result.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the content item comprises an image.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the content item comprises multimedia content.