Content request by location

• US 10,536,800 B1
• Filed: 09/18/2018
• Issued: 01/14/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 01/26/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Snap, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Snap, Inc.
• Inventors: Zimerman, Gadi, Sadeh, Ido
• Primary Examiner(s): Rampuria, Sharad
• Application Number:
  US16/134,594
• Time in Patent Office: 483 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/021 Services related to particular areas, e.g. point of interest [POI] services, venue services or geofences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/023 using mutual or relative location information between multiple location based services [LBS] targets or of distance thresholds
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/60 Subscription-based services using application servers or record carriers, e.g. SIM application toolkits

Abstract

A method of obtaining media content of an event, comprising: identifying a real-life event and, a time of said real-life event a geographic location of the real-life event; identifying a subset of a plurality of client terminals of users located in proximity to the geographic location of the real-life event at said time of said real-life event; sending a message to the subset of client terminals containing a request to acquire media content documenting the real-life event; and receiving at least one media content item documenting the real-life event from at least one client terminal of the subset of client terminals, the at least one media content item acquired by at least one user of the users using the at least one client terminal in response to the message.

Claims

1. A method of obtaining media content of an event, comprising:

identifying a subset of a plurality of client terminals of a plurality of users, client terminals of the subset being located in proximity to a geographic location of a real-life event at a time of the real-life event;

sending a message to each client terminal of the subset, the message containing a request, to present on a respective display, to acquire media content documenting the real-life event in the geographic location, the request comprising instructions for imaging the real-life event;

receiving, from a first client terminal of the subset, a media content item in response to the message, the media content item being acquired by the first client terminal of the subset and the media content item documenting the real-life event;

in response to receiving the media content item from the first client terminal, crediting a first user associated with the first client terminal for providing the media content item; and

distributing, to a second client terminal associated with a second user, the media content item based on a credit associated with the second user for providing a requested media content item.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the distributing comprises distributing the media content item to the second client terminal while the media content item is being received from the first client terminal.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying a second subset of the plurality of client terminals of users potentially interested in the real-life event; and

providing the media content item to the second subset of client terminals.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the distributing occurring at a frequency determined based on at least one of the time and the geographic location of the real-life event.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing the media content item to the second client terminal, wherein the providing includes sending a message with a reference to a network-accessible content file containing the media content item.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the location and the geographic location of the real-life event is identified using a search action comprising searching at least one events source which is external to the client terminal.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the location and the geographic location of the real-life event are manually provided by a user entering event details into an event dataset.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

sending a message with a reference to a network-accessible content file containing the media content item to at least some of the plurality of client terminals.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing the media content item to at least one third party to be presented by the at least one third party in relation to the real-life event.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying of the subset of client terminals comprises:

monitoring geographic locations of the plurality of client terminals; and

identifying when at least one of the plurality of client terminals is located in proximity to the geographic location of the real-life event.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying of the subset of client terminals includes accessing at least one calendar stored in a memory of at least one of the plurality of client terminals.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the identifying includes ranking of the subset of client terminals according to past media content items received from each of the plurality of client terminals.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the instructions include at least one text instruction to arrive at the geographic location, and coordinates of the geographic location of the real-life event to be included in a map that indicates the geographic location, wherein the at least one text instruction and the map are presented on a screen of each of the subset of client terminals.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the map includes multiple identified geographic locations of real-life events.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the media content item is received by a message with a reference to a network-accessible content file containing the media content item.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the media content item is aggregated with other media content items.