AUTOMATED MOBILE POSITIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA METHOD AND SYSTEM

• US 20150106448A1
• Filed: 08/08/2014
• Published: 04/16/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/10/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Aura Home, Inc. (Pushd, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Abdur Chowdhury, Andrew Lorek, Ben Cherry, Eric Jensen, Matt Sanford, Ophir Frieder, Tyler Howarth
• Inventors: FRIEDER, Ophir, OWNBEY, Ian Miles, CHERRY, Ben, CHOWDHURY, Abdur, HOWARTH, Tyler, JENSEN, Eric, LOREK, Andrew, SANFORD, Matt
• Granted Patent: US 9,386,052 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/20 Instruments for performing navigational calculations G01C21/24, G01C21/26 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/21 for social networking applications

Abstract

A method, system, and/or apparatus for automatically tracking a mobile user using the user'"'"'s mobile device. This invention is particularly useful in the field of social media, such as for detecting and tracking the location and activity of a user and her community. The method or implementing software application uses or relies upon location information available on the mobile device from any source, such as cell phone usage and/or other device applications. The social media system automatically determines a location type and/or user activity from context information. The context information can include current and past location and user and/or community information, time-dependent information, and third party information. The location activities can be presented to the community using pictograms selected to represent user activities.

Claims

1. A method of sharing locations and/or activities of a user participating in a social networking service, the method executed by a computer system and comprising:

receiving a user-defined pictogram for a destination;

automatically associating the pictogram with the destination; and

automatically sharing the pictogram in the social networking service upon further user arrivals at the destination prior to receiving any additional user information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the pictogram corresponds to a user activity at the destination.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the pictogram is manually selected by the user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the pictogram is selected or changed upon the user visiting the destination.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving the user pictogram for several visits to the destination before the automatically sharing step.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a plurality of pictograms for a destination; and

automatically determining one or more of the plurality of pictograms to share at a further arrival at the destinations as a function of an automatically determined context of the further arrival.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically prompting confirmation of the pictogram at one or more additional user visits to the destination.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

automatically determining a user has arrived at the destination;

automatically determining the user activity for the destination at further user visits to the destination; and

automatically sharing a corresponding pictogram for the determined user activity.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically ranking a user potential activity based on context and presenting pictograms for that ranked list to the user for selection or confirmation.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically refining a location of the destination as a function of user routines established by several user visits to the destination.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically providing pictogram summaries to the user of user locations, user activities, or combinations thereof for a predetermined time period.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising linking user photographs to the pictograms.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising rapidly displaying user photographs in response to a plurality of user hand movements within a continuous user swipe on a mobile device screen.

17. The method of claim 13, further comprising automatically determining the first user activity and/or second user activity at the further visit based upon a context of the further visit.

18. The method of claim 13, further comprising automatically storing shared pictograms and providing pictogram summaries to the user of user locations, user activities, or combinations thereof for a predetermined time period.

14. A method of sharing locations and/or activities of a user participating in a social networking service, the method executed by a computer system and comprising:

receiving a user-defined first pictogram corresponding to a first user activity for a location;

receiving a user-defined second pictogram corresponding to a second user activity for the location;

automatically tagging the location with the first and second pictograms and storing the tagged location in a location database;

automatically determining a further visit of the user to the location;

automatically determining at least one of the first user activity or the second user activity at the further visit to the location; and

automatically sharing a corresponding at least one of the first pictogram or the second pictogram in the social networking service upon determining the at least one of the first user activity or the second user activity at the further visit.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein each of the first pictogram and the second pictogram was manually entered by the user for the location.

16. The method of claim 14, further comprising automatically prompting confirmation of the first user activity and/or second user activity at one or more of the plurality of user visits at the location.

19. A computer server for providing a social networking service, comprising:

a tagging module configured to correlate manually entered user pictograms to user destinations;

a database module configured to store the pictograms for the user destinations; and

a communication module configured to automatically share one or more user pictograms in the social networking service upon further user arrivals at a corresponding one of the user destinations.

20. The computer server of claim 19, further comprising an association module configured to associate the user pictogram with the corresponding one of the user locations.