Social-mobile-local (SML) networking with intelligent semantic processing

• US 9,338,251 B2
• Filed: 04/18/2013
• Issued: 05/10/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 04/18/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Graph, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Niimblecat Incorporated
• Inventors: Mehta, Sunil, Meyer, David, Murgai, Poonam, Seaver, David O.
• Primary Examiner(s): Srivastava, Vivek
• Assistant Examiner(s): Asres, Hermon
• Application Number:
  US13/865,202
• Publication Number:
  US 20130282819A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,118 Days
• Field of Search: 709/204, 709/205
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

A social-mobile-local (SML) system and environment includes user mobile devices, a distributed communications network over which the devices communicate, a means of sensing proximity between pairs of mobile devices, and one or more SML databases and programs resident on the user mobile devices, on remote computers, or both. Challenges addressed include prevention of “alert flooding,” privacy protection, credential verification, entering detailed data on mobile devices, power-saving, and improved quality in both the choice and the content of notifications. Solutions include the aggregation of online information about a user to create an aggregate profile, enabling the user to create multiple personas by selecting what information from the profile or from other sources to reveal to other users under which circumstances, enabling the user to broadcast “wants” and preview what is available in the vicinity, linguistic analysis detecting nuanced correspondences between terms entered for wants and filtering out purely incidental word-matches, and adaptive algorithms to make the best use of battery power and other resources in dynamic surroundings.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

storing a list of request-type wants and a list of corresponding offer-type wants on at least one network server,

receiving information describing the locations of a plurality of client devices communicatively connected to the server,

receiving, from a first client device, a first want registered by a first user,

where the registering of the first want comprises entering custom text, and where the custom text comprises a form of an input verb and an input noun phrase,

storing the first want on the server,

generating a first semantic family of verbs complementary to the input verb,

generating a second semantic family of the complete noun phrase,

combining the first semantic family and the second semantic family into a combined semantic family of wants,

semantically comparing the combined semantic family of wants with at least one other known wants previously registered by at least one other user whose client device is located less than a threshold distance from the first user'"'"'s client device,

identifying any of the other known wants matching part of the combined semantic family as complements of the first want,

if no complements are found, expanding the combined semantic family by additional linguistic analysis and repeating the semantically comparing,

if at least one complement is found, weighting each of the complements'"'"' degree of semantic correspondence to the first want,

sending information about the complements to the first client device in order of decreasing weight, and

sending information about the first want to each user who registered one of the complements.

2. The method of claim 1, where the generating of the first semantic family of verbs comprises detecting forms of verbs that were previously stored on the server as complementary verb pairs.

3. The method of claim 1, where the forms of verbs in the complementary verb pairs are neither identical, nor similar, nor synonymous to the form of the verb in the first want.

4. The method of claim 1, where the additional linguistic analysis comprises at least one of squashing to lowercase, tokenizing, tagging for part of speech, reducing a plural to a singular, or separating a modifier from a central term being modified if it does not change the meaning of the central term.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising increasing the threshold distance and semantically comparing the combined semantic family with known wants originating within the increased threshold distance.

6. The method of claim 1, where both the first want and the complement comprise “

to tell others like me that I am a”

or a synonymous phrase.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving, from the first client device, information describing a first persona created to represent the first user.

8. The method of claim 7, where the persona comprises a user-edited subset of data from a pre-existing online profile.

9. The method of claim 7, where creating the persona comprises:

automatically aggregating data about the first user from multiple online sources onto the server or the first client device, and

providing an editing function on the first client device to enable the first user to edit the data.

10. The method of claim 7, where one of the alerts comprises information about a second persona created by a second user who registered the complementary want.

11. The method of claim 7, where the persona comprises a rule defining a condition, where the condition must be met before at least a subset of the information about the first persona may be transmitted to the client device of another user.

12. The method of claim 11, where the persona comprises a plurality of rules arranged in a cascading hierarchy.

13. The method of claim 7, where the alert to the other client device comprises less than all the information of the first persona and a challenge composed or selected by the first user, and where the method further comprises:

relaying a response to the challenge from the second user'"'"'s client device to the first user'"'"'s client device; and

if the first user accepts the response, sending all the information of the first persona to the other client device.

14. The method of claim 7, where the alert to the other client device comprises a challenge but does not comprise a location of the first user'"'"'s client device, and further comprising:

relaying a response to the challenge from the second user'"'"'s client device to the first user'"'"'s client device; and

if the first user accepts the response, sending the location to the other client device.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending a message to the first client device before sending the alert if the number of detected complements exceeds a threshold quantity.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising, if no complement is found:

increasing the threshold distance and comparing the first want with other known wants from devices located within the increased threshold distance, or

removing a modifier from the first want and repeating the linguistically analyzing for the resulting broadened first want,

where removing the modifier does not change the meaning of the noun phrase.

17. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving an additional persona from the first client device,

where the additional persona differs from the first persona, and

where the first persona and the additional persona represent different aspects of the first user.

18. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving and storing user-selected criteria describing the types of other users to whom one, both, or neither of the first persona or the additional persona will be visible.

19. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving and storing status information for the first persona and the additional persona, where a status of the first persona and a status of the additional persona differ from each other.

20. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

defining a minimum size for the first semantic family, the second semantic family, or the combined semantic family;

delaying the semantically comparing until the minimum size is reached or exceeded.