Methods and systems for social media-based profiling of entity location by associating entities and venues with geo-tagged short electronic messages

A method of profiling venues, comprising:

• obtaining from a social media source a first plurality of short unstructured electronic messages, each having an associated first geographic location and message content, wherein the message content includes a first venue name and one or more visit characteristics;
• obtaining from an information source a second plurality of venue locations, each having an associated second geographic location and second venue name that is substantially similar to the first venue name;
• determining for each venue location in the second plurality whether each respective short message in the first plurality has an associated first geographic location that is within a predefined distance of the second geographic location associated with the each venue location;
• in response to the determining, associating in a database respective short messages and venue locations whose associated first and second geographic locations are within the predefined distance;
• and
• applying a clustering algorithm to the database to cluster the venues into venue groups and filter out outliers, wherein the outliers represent one or more venues in the database that have one or more aggregate characteristics that are substantially different from corresponding aggregate characteristics of other venues in the database;
• and
• when venue records in the database are associated with more than a threshold number of short unstructured electronic messages, updating the one or more venue characteristics of the venue records based on the first characteristics of the associated short unstructured electronic messages.

A computer system, comprising:

• one or more processors;
• memory;
• and
• one or more programs, wherein the one or more programs are stored in the memory and configured to be executed by the one or more processors, the one or more programs including instructions for:
• obtaining from a first social media source a new short unstructured electronic message with an associated geographic location and message content;
• identifying a first venue name and a first visit characteristic from the message content;
• accessing a database of venues, wherein the database includes for respective venues a venue name, a geographic location and one or more venue characteristics, wherein information in the database reflects information associated with the respective venues extracted from a plurality of social media posts, including a plurality of prior short unstructured electronic messages from the first social media source;
• determining whether the database includes a candidate venue that has a venue name and geographic location that respectively are substantially similar to the first venue name and the associated geographic location;
• when the candidate venue exists in the database, associating the new short unstructured electronic message with the candidate venue;
• and
• when venue records in the database are associated with more than a threshold number of new short unstructured electronic messages, updating the one or more venue characteristics of the venue records based on the first visit characteristics of the associated new short unstructured electronic messages.