System and methods for generating optimal post times for social networking sites

• US 9,224,095 B2
• Filed: 03/15/2013
• Issued: 12/29/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/13/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sprout Social Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Sprout Social Incorporated
• Inventors: Booth, Joel Alexander, Howard, Justyn, Rankin, Aaron
• Primary Examiner(s): CHEN, ALAN S
• Application Number:
  US13/840,457
• Publication Number:
  US 20130275348A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,019 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2477 Temporal data queries
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/02 Knowledge representation; Symbolic representation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking

Abstract

A system and methods are disclosed for determining the ideal times for a person, software client, or other entity to post a message to a social networking site. An ideal time is a time when the post will have a maximum impact, where impact is some measure of success as defined by the posting entity. To determine the ideal times, the posting patterns of individual users are aggregated in a weighted fashion, taking into consideration both the entity'"'"'s desired impact and the likelihood that the user will be online and able to view the post within a specified time frame.

Claims

1. A system for a user of a social networking site, the system generating at least one of ideal post time suggestions and values associated with the ideal post time suggestions, the system comprising:

a user database for storing information about the user and information about followers that follow activity of the user on the social networking site;

a timestamp database for storing times at which the followers post to the social networking site; and

a computer for generating the ideal post time suggestions for the user, wherein the computer calculates the ideal post time suggestions by acquiring follower attributes, computing and assigning a score to each of the followers based on the follower attributes and the information in the user database, generating activity models for each of the followers based on times in the timestamp database, weighting the activity models based on the score assigned to each of the followers, and aggregating the weighted activity models of the followers.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the follower attributes are acquired from at least one of a social importance ranking service or sources of data having information about the followers.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the computer smoothes the activity models by applying a smoothing algorithm.

4. A method for generating ideal post time suggestions for a user of a social networking site, the method comprising:

acquiring attributes of followers that follow the activity of the user on the social networking site;

collecting timelines for each of the followers according to an available sequence of follower posts and times of those posts;

computing and assigning a score to each of the followers based on user interests and the follower attributes;

generating activity models for each of the followers based on the timelines;

weighting the activity models based on the score assigned to each of the followers; and

aggregating the weighted activity models of the followers.