Apparatus and method for managing a social network

• US 9,100,550 B2
• Filed: 11/20/2009
• Issued: 08/04/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/2009
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property I LP (AT&T, Inc.)
• Inventors: Roberts, Linda, Chang, E-Lee, Sung, Ja-Young, Barrett Schultz, Natasha, King, Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): Flynn, Nathan
• Assistant Examiner(s): Marandi, James R
• Application Number:
  US12/623,268
• Publication Number:
  US 20110126253A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,083 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/21 Design, administration or maintenance of databases
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/252 between a Database Management System and a front-end application
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/7867 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, title and artist information, manually generated time, location and usage information, user ratings
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/20 Education
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/435 Processing of additional data, e.g. decrypting of additional data, reconstructing software from modules extracted from the transport stream
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4438 Window management, e.g. event handling following interaction with the user interface
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4722 for requesting additional data associated with the content
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/6125 involving transmission via Internet transmission by internet of broadcast information H04H60/82
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/812 involving advertisement data advertising per se G06Q30/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/8173 End-user applications, e.g. Web browser, game
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/17327 with deferred transmission or handling of upstream communications

Abstract

A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a system having a controller to collect one or more user-generated comments from each of a plurality of computing devices, detect a correlation in the one or more user-generated comments collected from the plurality of computing devices, and establish a social network between the plurality of computing devices according to the detected correlation. The one or more user-generated comments can be temporally associated with media content presented at the plurality of computing devices. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

providing, by a system including a processor, an overlay combined with a presentation of video content to each of a plurality of computing devices for presentation to illustrate commentaries temporally associated with portions of the video content, the plurality of computing devices including first and second computing devices;

collecting, by the system, a plurality of commentaries from the plurality of computing devices, wherein a first presentation by the first computing device of the overlay combined with the video content is at a different time than a second presentation by the second computing device of the overlay combined with the video content, wherein a first commentary of the plurality of commentaries is obtained from the first computing device during the first presentation, and wherein a second commentary of the plurality of commentaries is obtained from the second computing device during the second presentation;

detecting, by the system, in the plurality of commentaries a cluster of correlated commentaries having a temporal proximity to each other in relation to the video content;

analyzing, by the system, the cluster of correlated commentaries based on key words;

detecting, by the system, an educational aspect in the cluster of correlated commentaries, wherein the educational aspect corresponds to a behavioral pattern exhibiting a lack of understanding of a portion of the video content, and wherein the system determines the behavioral pattern according to regression analysis and the key words;

transmitting, by the system, in response to the detecting of the educational aspect, a first message to more than one computing device of the plurality of computing devices from which commentaries of the cluster of correlated commentaries have been collected, wherein the first message provides notice of a potential for establishing an educational social network;

establishing the educational social network responsive to receiving second messages from the more than one computing device of the plurality of computing devices from which the commentaries of the cluster of correlated commentaries have been collected, wherein the second messages indicate an interest in joining the educational social network;

detecting, by the system, a decorrelation of commentaries collected from the plurality of computing devices, wherein the decorrelation indicates a lack of common interest between the plurality of computing devices in a portion of the educational social network;

selectively terminating, by the system, the portion of the educational social network responsive to the detecting of the decorrelation.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving, by the system, the video content from a source computing device storing the video content, wherein the source computing device is part of the educational social network, and

wherein the collecting of the plurality of commentaries is responsive to a request received by the system from the source computing device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the educational social network comprises a cluster of computing devices of the plurality of computing devices.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the plurality of computing devices comprise set top boxes, wherein the set top boxes are associated with a first social network, and wherein the plurality of computing devices are limited to members of the first social network.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising:

detecting additional computing devices with users having interests correlated to the cluster of correlated commentaries; and

requesting authorization from members of the educational social network to add the additional computing devices to the educational social network.

6. The method of claim 1, comprising sharing a commentary of the plurality of commentaries between the plurality of computing devices.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the establishing of the educational social network comprises instructing a server managing an already existing social network to establish the educational social network.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising:

detecting, by the system, the behavioral pattern from a recognition of an item from a group consisting of;

recorded speech and drawings in the cluster of correlated commentaries; and

submitting, by the system, a notification to a second system presenting the video content, wherein the notification indicates the lack of understanding of the portion of the video content.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the educational aspect corresponds to a second behavioral pattern exhibiting an understanding of a portion of the video content, wherein the video content is selected from a group consisting of:

video content;

audio content;

still image content;

text content;

articles;

lecture presentation materials; and

combinations thereof.

10. The method of claim 9, comprising:

detecting, by the system, the second behavioral pattern from a recognition of an item selected from a group consisting of;

recorded speech and drawings in the cluster of correlated commentaries; and

submitting, by the system, a notification to a media source associated with the video content, wherein the notification indicates the understanding of the portion of the video content.

11. The method of claim 1, comprising:

detecting, by the system, from the cluster of correlated commentaries a degree of understanding of the video content; and

submitting, by the system, a notification that describes the degree of understanding of the video content.

12. The method of claim 11, comprising:

receiving, by the system, a request to identify correlated comments, wherein the request is received from a requesting computing device of the plurality of computing devices, and wherein the detecting of the cluster of correlated commentaries is responsive to the request; and

transmitting, by the system, the notification responsive to detecting that a result of a comparison of the degree of understanding satisfies a threshold.

13. The method of claim 1, comprising providing, by the system, in the overlay a plurality of iconic symbols descriptive of the a commentary of the plurality of commentaries, wherein each iconic symbol of the plurality of iconic symbols differs in appearance, and each iconic symbol of the plurality of iconic symbols portrays a different educational meaning, and wherein the method further comprises enabling sharing of the plurality of iconic symbols between the more than one computing devices of the plurality of computing devices.

14. A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, comprising instructions, wherein responsive to executing the instructions, a processor performs operations comprising:

collecting a plurality of commentaries from a plurality of computing devices including first and second computing devices, wherein the plurality of commentaries is temporally associated with portions of media content supplied by a source computing device of the plurality of computing devices, wherein a first presentation by the first computing device of the media content is at a different time than a second presentation by the second computing device of the media content, wherein a first commentary of the plurality of commentaries is obtained from the first computing device during the first presentation, and wherein a second commentary of the plurality of commentaries is obtained from the second computing device during the second presentation;

detecting in the plurality of commentaries a cluster of correlated commentaries;

identifying trends from the cluster of correlated commentaries;

transmitting, in response to the identifying of the trends, a first message to computing devices of the plurality of computing devices from which commentaries of the cluster of correlated commentaries have been collected, wherein the first message provides notice of a potential for establishing a social network;

establishing the social network according to the trends and responsive to receiving second messages from more than one computing device of the plurality of computing devices from which the commentaries of the cluster of correlated commentaries have been collected, wherein the second messages indicate an interest in joining the social network;

detecting a decorrelation of commentaries collected from the plurality of computing devices, wherein the decorrelation indicates a lack of common interest between the plurality of computing devices in a portion of the social network;

selectively terminating a portion of the social network responsive to the detecting of the decorrelation.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise enabling sharing commentaries between the plurality of computing devices, wherein the notice of the potential for establishing the social network comprises an indication of interest to join the social network, wherein the identifying of the trends comprises applying regression analysis to the cluster of correlated commentaries to detect a lack of understanding of a portion of the media content.

16. The non-transitory machine-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise submitting a notification to the source computing device, wherein the notification identifies the trends, and wherein the trends indicate a level of understanding of at least a portion of the media content.

17. A computing device, comprising:

a memory that stores computer instructions; and

a processor coupled to the memory, wherein responsive to executing the instructions, the processor performs operations comprising;

presenting an overlay combined with a presentation of media content to illustrate commentaries temporally associated with portions of the media content, wherein a first commentary of the commentaries is obtained from a first computing device during a first presentation, wherein a second commentary of the commentaries is obtained from a second computing device during a second presentation, and wherein the first presentation, the second presentation and the presenting of the overlay combined with the presentation of media content each occur at different times;

receiving an invitation to a social network that includes a second computing device, wherein the second computing device is a source of a subset of the commentaries temporally associated with the portions of the media content, and wherein the subset of the commentaries educationally correlate to second commentaries generated by the computing device;

sending an acceptance of the invitation, wherein the social network is established in response to the acceptance;

submitting additional commentaries after the social network is established, wherein the additional commentaries are analyzed to detect a decorrelation of commentaries collected from a plurality of computing devices, and wherein the decorrelation indicates a lack of common interest between the plurality of computing devices in a portion of the social network; and

receiving a termination from the social network responsive to a detection of the decorrelation of the commentaries.

18. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the social network includes user devices sharing a level of understanding of the portions of the media content.

19. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the operations further comprise sharing commentaries among a group of computing devices associated with the social network, and wherein the media content includes educational content.