Internet profiling

• US 6,839,680 B1
• Filed: 09/30/1999
• Issued: 01/04/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Liu, Albert M., Ben-Malek, Hamid, Gower, Stefan F.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hapiq, Tariz R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): LOFTIS, JOHNNA RONEE
• Application Number:
  US09/410,151
• Time in Patent Office: 1,923 Days
• Field of Search: 705/10, 705/7
• US Class Current: 705/7.33
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0204 Market segmentation

Abstract

A system, method, and various software products provide for consistent identification of web users across multiple web sites, servers and domains, monitoring and capture of data describing the users'"'"' web activities, categorization of the web activity data, aggregation of the data into time dependent models describing interest of users and groups over time. Categorization is made with respect to a category tree which may be standardized or customized for each web site. User groups may be defined based on membership rules for category interest information and demographics. Individual user profiles are then created for users automatically based on satisfaction of the user group membership rules. As new data is collected on a user over time, the category interest information extracted from the user'"'"'s web activity is updated to form a current model of the user'"'"'s interests relative to the various categories. This information is also used to automatically update group membership and user profile information. Identification of users across multiple sites is provided by a global service that recognizes each user and provides a globally unique identifier to a requesting web server, which can use the identifier to accumulate activity data for the user. Client side user identification is provided to track user activity data on web servers that do not communicate with the global service and do not process activity for category information. User profiles may be shared among web sites that form alliances. User activity data may be aggregated along various dimensions including users/user groups, categorization, and time to provide robust models of interest at any desired time scale.

Claims

1. A system for profiling users of online information systems, comprising:

a first web server that receives requests from a user for web content items and records web events for selected web content items,

wherein each web event comprises content identification information identifying a web content item, time information describing an amount of time the user interacted with the web content item, and category relevance information for a plurality of categories about the web content item;

an aggregation service that aggregates the plurality of web events recorded by the first web server with at least one web event obtained from a source remote from the first web server into aggregated information along at least one of a plurality of categorization dimensions;

a user group service for defining a plurality of user groups, each user group having a definable membership rule which can be evaluated with respect to at least one category based on category relevance information from web events aggregated by the aggregation service;

a profile service that determines for each user a user profile, the user profile specifying at least one user group, defined by the user group service, of which the user is member;

an alliance service for sharing user profiles with one or more remote web servers participating in an alliance;

a client application resident on a computer used by the user that records web events for selected items of web content requested from a second web server that does not itself record such web events, each web event recorded by the client application containing information identifying the web content item and time information describing an amount of time the user interacted with the web content, where the client application uploads the recorded web events periodically to a global upload service; and

a global upload service, remote from the first web server, that maintains information for each user indicating one or more web servers that subscribe to receive web events for the user, receives the web events from the client application of a user, and provides the web events to the web servers that subscribe to the user'"'"'s web events.

2. A system for profiling users of online information systems, comprising:

a first web server that receives requests from a user for web content items and records web events for selected web content items,

wherein each web event comprises content identification information identifying a web content item, time information describing an amount of time the user interacted with the web content item, and category relevance information for a plurality of categories about the web content item;

an aggregation service that;

an aggregates the plurality of web events recorded by the first web server with at least one web event obtained from a source remote from the first web server into aggregated information along at least one of a plurality of categorization dimensions;

scales the category relevance information of a web content item as a function of the amount of time the user interacted with the web content; and

transforms the category relevance information for each category into a weight, the weight being a function of a category score, the amount of time the user interacted with the web content item, a scaling factor, and a total time scaled category score for all categories;

a user group service for defining a plurality of user groups, each user group having a definable membership rule which can be evaluated with respect to at least one category based on category relevance information from web events aggregated by the aggregation service;

a profile service that determines for each user a user profile, the user profile specifying at least one user group, defined by the user group service, of which the user is member;

an alliance service for sharing user profiles with one or more remote web servers participating in an alliance;

wherein each category receives a scaled category score;

NewScore_i=Category Score_i*Duration_i*Constant

where Duration_i is the amount of time the user interacted with the web content item, and Constant is a scaling factor; and

wherein each category receives a Weight;

$\mathrm{TotalScore}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{\sum <br><br>}}<br><br>{\mathrm{NewScore}}_i$${\mathrm{Weight}}_i=100*\frac{{\mathrm{NewScore}}_i}{\mathrm{TotalScore}}$