×

Inferring the location of users in online social media platforms using social network analysis

  • US 9,794,358 B1
  • Filed: 03/13/2014
  • Issued: 10/17/2017
  • Est. Priority Date: 04/05/2013
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
Patent Images

1. A system for inferring the location of users of online social media platforms, the system comprising:

  • one or more processors and a non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions encoded thereon such that when the instructions are executed, the one or more processors perform operations of;

    (a) extracting a social network from data from at least one social media platform, wherein the social network comprises a plurality of users connected through social relationships, and wherein each user in the plurality of users has an identity on each social media platform;

    (b) generating a mapping in the social network from each user in the plurality of users to the user'"'"'s estimated geographical location, resulting in an estimated location mapping Est;

    (c) generating a mapping in the social network from each user in the plurality of users having known geographical location data to the user'"'"'s known geographical location, resulting in a known location mapping SL;

    (d) updating the estimated location mapping Est to have the same mapping as the known location mapping SL;

    (e) for a user j in the plurality of users having a mapping in the known location mapping SL, updating the location of j in Est′

    to be the location in the known location mapping SL, wherein Est′

    is an updated individual-location mapping for a current iteration;

    (f) repeating operation (e) for each user in the plurality of users;

    wherein N is a set of users having a social relationship with user j, and wherein NL is a set of locations;

    (g) for each user k in N having a mapping in Est, adding the estimated geographical location of k in Est to NL;

    (h) estimating a new geographical location of j using a geometric median metric;

    (i) updating Est′

    with the new geographical location of j;

    (j) iterating through operations (e) through (h) until a stopping criteria is met, wherein the stopping criteria is one of a fixed number of iterations, a number of users who have been located, and a percentage change in users with new geographical locations;

    (k) replacing the mappings in Est with those in Est′

    ; and

    (l) mapping users to final, estimated locations based on the mappings in Est.

View all claims
  • 1 Assignment
Timeline View
Assignment View
    ×
    ×