DETERMINING A COMMUNITY RATING FOR A USER USING FEEDBACK RATINGS OF RELATED USERS IN AN ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT

• US 20130041717A1
• Filed: 10/15/2012
• Published: 02/14/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Ratterman, Robert J., Maltzman, Reed, Knepfle, Joshua D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,635,098 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.29
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0282 Rating or review of business operators or products
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0609 Buyer or seller confidence or verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions

Abstract

Community ratings are determined for users of an electronic marketplace. In a typical configuration, the community rating of an individual reflect the individual'"'"'s reputation in the electronic community (e.g. feedback rating) as well as the reputations of the users the individual sponsors and the reputations of each user they sponsor, and so on. Various methodologies are provided for determining a community rating, such as aggregating feedback ratings, or weighting or thresholding these feedback ratings.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

associating, by a processor, one or more individual feedback ratings with a plurality of users in an electronic community, the plurality of users including a particular user, one or more first descendants referred by the particular user to the electronic community, and one or more second descendants referred by the one or more first descendants to the electronic community;

deriving, by the processor, a community rating associated with the particular user by aggregating the individual feedback ratings respectively associated with the particular user, the one or more first descendants, and the one or more second descendants; and

storing the community rating associated with the particular user in a storage device.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

maintaining a relationship tree representing relationships among the plurality of users of the electronic community, wherein the relationships include sponsorship relationships among the plurality of users, the one or more first descendants, and the one or more second descendants, wherein the one or more first descendants referred by the particular user are children of the particular user and siblings to each other, and wherein the one or more second descendants referred by the one or more first descendants are children of the one or more first descendants and siblings to each other; and

storing the sponsorship relationships in a data structure.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the data structure for the particular user contains a pointer to at least one of the plurality of users.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the electronic community comprises an electronic trading community to trade merchandise over a network, and wherein the trading of the merchandise comprises at least one of buying or selling of goods or services.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein the network comprises the Internet.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the one or more individual feedback ratings associated with the particular user comprise feedback values concerning the particular user received from other users of the plurality of users in the electronic community.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the other users of the plurality of users comprise users that have previously traded with the particular user.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the relationship tree includes one or more n-ary trees.

9. A machine-readable medium having stored thereon data representing sets of instructions which, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to:

associate, by a processor, one or more individual feedback ratings with a plurality of users including a particular user in an electronic community, one or more first descendants referred by the particular user to the electronic community, and one or more second descendants referred by the one or more first descendants to the electronic community;

derive, by the processor, a community rating associated with the particular user by aggregating the individual feedback ratings respectively associated with the particular user, the one or more first descendants, and the one or more second descendants; and

store the community rating associated with the particular user in a storage device.

10. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the community rating associated with the particular user represents a reputation value associated with the particular user.

11. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, further comprising maintaining a relationship tree between each user of the plurality of users, the relationship tree maintaining sponsorship relationships between the particular user and any other users of the plurality of users that were sponsored by the particular user.

12. The machine-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the sponsorship relationships of the plurality of users are represented as the relationship tree including one or more n-ary trees.

13. The machine-readable medium of claim 11, wherein information concerning the sponsorship relationships among the plurality of users is stored in the data structure for each user of the plurality of users.

14. The machine-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the data structure for the particular user contains a pointer to at least one other user of the plurality of users that was sponsored by the particular user.

15. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the deriving of the community rating for the particular user is performed utilizing a recursive routine.

16. A system comprising:

a first storage medium; and

a first computer coupled with the first storage medium, and configured to;

associate one or more individual feedback ratings with a plurality of users of an online trading community, wherein the plurality of users include a particular user, and one or more lineal descendants directly or indirectly referred by the particular user to the online trading community, and wherein the one or more individual feedback ratings associated with each of the plurality of users are established based on votes from other users of the plurality of users of the online trading community; and

derive a community rating corresponding to the particular user by aggregating the individual feedback rating associated with the particular user, and the individual feedback ratings associated with the one or more lineal descendants directly or indirectly referred by the particular user to the online trading community.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the first computer is configured to maintain a relationship tree representing relationships among the plurality of users of the online trading community, wherein the relationships include sponsorship relationships among the plurality of users, and wherein direct descendents referred by the particular user are children of the particular user and are siblings to each other, and wherein indirect descendents referred by one of the direct descendents are children of the one of the direct descendents and are siblings to each other.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the first computer is configured to store the sponsorship relationships among the plurality of users in a data structure, and wherein the data structure contains a pointer to at least one of the plurality of users.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein deriving is performed utilizing the pointer in the data structure.

20. The system of claim 16, further comprising:

a second storage medium; and

a second computer coupled with the second storage medium and the first computer via a network interface, wherein the second computer is configured to receive feedback concerning the particular user from the other users of the plurality of users, to generate a feedback value corresponding to the particular user based on the feedback, and to transmit the feedback value to the first computer.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the first computer comprises a server computer and the second computer comprises a client computer.

22. The system of claim 20, wherein the second computer is accessed by the plurality of users to trade merchandise, and wherein the trading of the merchandise comprises buying or selling of goods or services.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein the network interface is to couple the first computer with the second computer over a network having the Internet.