System and method for temporal identification of latent user communities using electronic content

#Various embodiments are described herein for a system and method for determining groups of users that may be temporally related to one another through electronic content generated by the users.

#Topology-based community detection methods may not be able to identify communities of users that share similar conceptual interests due to two reasons, among others: i) there are many users on a social network that have very similar interests but are not explicitly connected to each other, e.g. through follower or followee relationships; and ii) many of the social connections are not necessarily due to users' interest similarity but can be due to other factors such as friendship and kinship that do not necessarily point to inter-user interest similarity (Deng et al. 2013).

#In a broad aspect, at least one embodiment described herein provides a method for determining a community of users with similar temporal behaviour from a plurality of users that generate electronic content that is stored in a data store, wherein the method comprises: accessing electronic content from the data store using a processing unit, the electronic content being created by the users during a time period; determining at least one transient topic from the accessed electronic content for the time period using a topic extractor; determining contributions of the users to the identified at least one transient topic using a user community detector; determining the community of users as being a subset of the users that have similar temporal contributions to one of the at least one identified transient topics using the user community detector; and providing a recommendation based on a determined user community.

#For a better understanding of the various embodiments described herein, and to show more clearly how these various embodiments may be carried into effect, reference will be made, by way of example, to the accompanying drawings which show at least one example embodiment, and which are now described. The drawings are not intended to limit the scope of the teachings described herein.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example embodiment of a content analytics unit for determining users that may be conceptually and temporally related to one another over certain time periods.

#FIG. 2 is a flowchart diagram of an example embodiment of a method for determining users that may be conceptually and temporally related to one another over certain time periods.

#Further aspects and features of the example embodiments described herein will appear from the following description taken together with the accompanying drawings.

#Various embodiments in accordance with the teachings herein will be described below to provide an example of at least one embodiment of the claimed subject matter. No embodiment described herein limits any claimed subject matter. The claimed subject matter is not limited to devices, systems or methods having all of the features of any one of the devices, systems or methods described below or to features common to multiple or all of the devices and or methods described herein. It is possible that there may be a device, system or method described herein that is not an embodiment of any claimed subject matter. Any subject matter that is described herein that is not claimed in this document may be the subject matter of another protective instrument, for example, a continuing patent application, and the applicants, inventors or owners do not intend to abandon, disclaim or dedicate to the public any such subject matter by its disclosure in this document.

#It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, where considered appropriate, reference numerals may be repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements. In addition, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments described herein. However, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that the embodiments described herein may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures and components have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the embodiments described herein. Also, the description is not to be considered as limiting the scope of the embodiments described herein.