Hot within my communities

• US 9,178,951 B2
• Filed: 09/13/2012
• Issued: 11/03/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/22/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yahoo Assets LLC
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sampson, Todd, Sampson, John, Ho, Steve, Marcoullier, Eric, Rafer, Neil Scott
• Primary Examiner(s): SHAW, PETER C
• Application Number:
  US13/615,077
• Publication Number:
  US 20130007132A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,146 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/218
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention are directed to identifying network resources or other topics that are of interest to members of multiple online communities to which a user belongs. Online communities include blogs, websites, games, e-commerce systems, messaging systems, wikis, etc. For each online community, click activity or other client behaviors are tracked and analyzed to determine statistical metrics about community activity, such as which articles, links, services, or other network resources are popular in the online community. At least some of the tracking or analysis can be performed by clients that access the online communities, by a server of each online community, and/or by a central tracking system. The results for each community may be further analyzed relative to each other. The results are provided for all communities with which a given user is associated. For example, a list of the most popular links in the user'"'"'s selected online communities.

Claims

1. A network device, comprising:

a memory that stores instructions and data; and

a processor that executes the stored instructions to perform actions, including;

providing a plurality of content, at least a portion of the plurality of content associated with a first community and a remainder of the plurality of content associated with a second community, said first community and said second community being different online communities;

receiving a usage pattern for each of a plurality of client devices for at least one of the plurality of content, at least a portion of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the first community and a remainder of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the second community;

performing an analysis of the usage patterns for the client devices associated with the first community and the client devices associated with the second community, wherein a first link is determined for the content associated with the first community, a second link is determined for the content associated with the second community, and a third link is determined for content based on a combined analysis of usage patterns from client devices associated with the first community and client devices associated with the second community;

employing the usage patterns to infer topics of interest to the plurality of client devices; and

selectively providing the first link, the second link, the third link, a link to the first community, a link to the second community, and the inferred topics in a rank ordering for display by at least one client device.

2. The network device of claim 1, wherein determining the third link further comprises performing the combined analysis based on a statistical metric.

3. The network device of claim 1, wherein the actions further include:

receiving an association between a client device and a community, wherein the association is at least one of the following;

a registration by the client device, or a visit by the client device to a webpage associated with the community.

4. The network device of claim 1, wherein selectively providing for display further comprises providing the links sorted based on a geographic location of the client devices that interacted with the links.

5. The network device of claim 1, wherein at least one other client device is associated with a user that is not a member of the first or second community, and information about a usage pattern of the at least one other client device is included in the combined analysis to identify at least a fourth link based on the usage pattern patterns of the at least one other client device.

6. The network device of claim 1, wherein the usage patterns include information about selections of links by a client device, where the selection is of a link that connects one community to a different community.

7. The network device of claim 1, wherein display by the at least one client device further comprises displaying information about cross community selections.

8. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium, having computer-executable instructions tangibly stored thereon, that in response to execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations, comprising:

providing a plurality of content, at least a portion of the plurality of content associated with a first community and a remainder of the plurality of content associated with a second community, said first community and said second community being different online communities;

receiving a usage pattern for each of a plurality of client devices for at least one of the plurality of content, at least a portion of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the first community and a remainder of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the second community;

performing an analysis of the usage patterns for the client devices associated with the first community and the client devices associated with the second community, wherein a first link is determined for the content associated with the first community, a second link is determined for the content associated with the second community, and a third link is determined for content based on a combined analysis of usage patterns from client devices associated with the first community and client devices associated with the second community;

employing the usage patterns to infer topics of interest to the plurality of client devices; and

selectively providing the first link, the second link, the third link, a link to the first community, a link to the second community, and the inferred topics in a rank ordering for display by at least one client device.

9. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein determining at least one of the links further comprises determining whether users associated with the client devices spend more average time at an outside community different from the community with which the user is a member than within a community with which the user of the client device is a member.

10. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving an association between a client device and a community, wherein the association is at least one of the following;

a registration by the client device, or a visit by the client device to a webpage associated with the community.

11. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein selectively providing for display further comprises providing the links sorted based on a geographic location of the client devices that interacted with the links.

12. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein at least one other client device is associated with a user that is not a member of the first or second community, and information about a usage pattern of the at least one other client device is included in the combined analysis to identify at least a fourth link based on the usage pattern patterns of the at least one other client device.

13. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein the usage patterns include information about selections of links by a client device, where the selection is of a link that connects one community to a different community.

14. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 8, wherein display by the at least one client device further comprises displaying information about cross community selections.

15. A method comprising:

providing, via a computing device, a plurality of content, at least a portion of the plurality of content associated with a first community and a remainder of the plurality of content associated with a second community, said first community and said second community being different online communities;

receiving, at the computing device, a usage pattern for each of a plurality of client devices for at least one of the plurality of content, at least a portion of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the first community and a remainder of the client devices associated with a user that is a member of the second community;

performing, via the computing device, an analysis of the usage patterns for the client devices associated with the first community and the client devices associated with the second community;

determining, via the computing device, from the analysis a first link for the content associated with the first community, and a second link for the content associated with the second community;

performing, via the computing device, a combined analysis of usage patterns from client devices associated with the first community and client devices associated with the second community to determine a third link;

employing, via the computing device, the usage patterns to infer topics of interest to client devices that interacted with at least one of the plurality of content; and

selectively providing, via the computing device, the first link, the second link, the third link, a link to the first community, a link to the second community, and the inferred topics in a rank ordering for display by at least one client device.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein performing the analysis further comprises determining when during a given time period that a link is visited by a client device.

17. The method of claim 15, wherein determining at least one of the links further comprises determining whether users associated with client devices spend more average time at an outside community different from the community with which the user is a member than within a community with which the user of the client device is a member.

18. The method of claim 15, wherein selectively providing for display further comprises providing the links sorted based on a geographic location of the client devices that interacted with the links.

19. The method of claim 15, wherein at least one other client device is associated with a user that is not a member of the first or second community, and information about a usage pattern of the at least one other client device is included in the combined analysis to identify at least a fourth link based on the usage pattern patterns of the at least one other client device.

20. The method of claim 15, wherein the usage patterns include information about selections of links by a client device, where the selection is of a link that connects one community to a different community.