Method for relevant content discovery

• US 8,341,223 B1
• Filed: 06/07/2012
• Issued: 12/25/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/07/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Banjo, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Banjo, Inc.
• Inventors: Patton, Damien, Landrin-Schweitzer, Yann
• Primary Examiner(s): Fan, Hua
• Application Number:
  US13/491,363
• Publication Number:
  US 20120317198A1
• Time in Patent Office: 201 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

A method including: retrieving information, associated with an account identifier, from a social network; generating a user profile from the retrieved information, wherein the user profile includes user interests; retrieving content from the social network; extracting content parameters from each piece of retrieved content, the content parameters including a content location and a content time; evaluating relevance of the content by a degree of similarity between the user profile and the content; in response to receiving a device location and a filtering time, filtering the content by the device location and the filtering time; and sending the filtered content to a user device.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

retrieving information, associated with an account identifier, from a social network;

generating a user profile from the retrieved information, wherein the user profile comprises user interests;

retrieving content from the social network;

extracting content parameters from each piece of retrieved content, the content parameters comprising a content location and a content time;

extracting an author from the retrieved content;

evaluating a relevance of content by a degree of similarity between the user profile and the content;

in response to receiving a device location and a filtering time;

filtering the content by the device location and the filtering time;

sending the filtered content to a user device; and

displaying an alert, wherein the alert comprises filtered content satisfying an alert condition, wherein the alert condition comprises a rarity condition specifying that the alert is displayed to a user upon determining that a frequency of content generated by the author within a location region associated with the device location is below a rarity threshold and that content generated by the author is historically associated with a location outside of the location region.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein retrieving content comprises retrieving content from a plurality of social networks.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the retrieved information comprises public information associated with the account identifier, wherein the user interests comprise interests extracted from the public information.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising receiving access permissions associated with the account identifier, wherein the retrieved information further comprises private information associated with the account identifier, wherein user interests comprise interests extracted from the private information.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein retrieving content from the social network comprises retrieving content generated by social network connections of the account identifier.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein content associated with a plurality of locations is retrieved.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein retrieving content from the social network comprises retrieving content generated within a time threshold.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein retrieving content comprises retrieving content associated with the device location.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the device location is periodically received.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

extracting connection accounts associated with the retrieved content; and

generating connection profiles from information, received from the social network, associated with the connection accounts.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein evaluating relevance of the content further comprises evaluating relevance of the content according to a measured similarity between the user profile and the respective connection profile.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein evaluating relevance of the content further comprises evaluating relevance of the content by a degree of connection separation between the account identifier and the respective connection account.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein filtering the content comprises selecting the content according to proximity between the content location and the device location.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the extracted content location is a geotagged location of the content.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein filtering the content comprises selecting the content according to proximity between the content time and the filtering time.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the content time is the time of content posting to the respective social network.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the filtered content to a user device comprises sending the filtered content as a list comprising:

identifiers representative of the filtered content; and

display instructions associated with the identifiers.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying, at the user device, the filtered content as a representation of the filtered content, wherein the representation comprises an icon associated with the respective content.

19. The method of claim 18, further comprising:

extracting connection accounts associated with the content; and

referencing an image associated with each connection account, wherein the icon comprises the referenced image.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the filtered content is displayed on a map.

21. The method of claim 18, further comprising displaying the filtered content with a first and second relevance indicator, wherein displaying filtered content with a first and second relevance indicator comprises:

displaying content having a score derived from the evaluated relevance over a predetermined threshold with the first relevance indicator; and

displaying content having rank under the predetermined threshold with the second relevance indicator.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the first relevance indicator comprises a unique icon representative of the respective content, and the second relevance indicator comprises a non-unique icon.