Computer services for identifying and exposing associations between user communities and items in a catalog
First Claim
1. A computer-implemented method of mining data associated with a computer system that provides online access to an electronic catalog of items, the method comprising:
- programmatically analyzing item selections of both members and non-members of a user community that represents a subset of a general user population to identify at least one item that is significantly more popular in the user community than in the general user population; and
in response to identifying the at least one item, electronically exposing to at least one user of the electronic catalog an association between the user community and the at least one item to users of the computer system.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A computer-implemented service associated with an electronic catalog analyzes purchase histories of users, and/or other types of activity data reflective of user affinities for specific items, to identify items that are significantly more popular in specific user communities than in a general user population. The communities may, for example, include email-based communities (e.g., all users with email addresses associated with a particular company), shipping address based communities (e.g., all users with shipping addresses in Seattle), and/or communities based on other types of user attributes. In one embodiment, a user of the service can select a particular community, such as by selecting the name of a corresponding organization or geographic region, to view a list of items having relatively high popularity levels therein. The results of the analysis may additionally or alternatively be used to affirmatively notify users of associations between particular items and communities, and/or to recommend items to users.
271 Citations
41 Claims
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1. A computer-implemented method of mining data associated with a computer system that provides online access to an electronic catalog of items, the method comprising:
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programmatically analyzing item selections of both members and non-members of a user community that represents a subset of a general user population to identify at least one item that is significantly more popular in the user community than in the general user population; and
in response to identifying the at least one item, electronically exposing to at least one user of the electronic catalog an association between the user community and the at least one item to users of the computer system. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A computer system, comprising:
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an electronic data repository that stores user activity data associated with each of a plurality of users, said user activity data reflecting user affinities for particular items represented in an electronic catalog;
a first component that analyzes the user activity data of the plurality of users, in conjunction with data that associates particular users with particular user communities, to identify, for each of a plurality of said user communities, a respective set of items that are significantly more popular in the respective user community than in a general user population; and
a second component that provides electronic user access to information that associates the sets of items with the corresponding user communities to assist users in selecting items from the electronic catalog. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
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31. A computer-implemented data mining method, comprising:
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providing an electronic data repository that contains user activity data associated with each of a plurality of users of an online system that provides access to an electronic catalog, said user activity data reflecting user-generated events associated with particular items represented in the electronic catalog;
programmatically identifying, among the plurality of users, a subset of users whose email addresses are associated with a particular organization; and
programmatically analyzing the user activity data associated with the plurality of users, including the subset of users, to identify a set of items that have experienced significantly higher levels of user activity among the subset of users than among the plurality of users. - View Dependent Claims (32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
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Specification