US 8,959,202 B2 · Generating statistics of popular content

Abstract

Client terminals report an easy-to-calculate identifier such as the Internet URL or a cryptographic hash of the content to a server. The server collects and counts the reported identifiers so as to obtain preliminary statistics. By aggregating these reported identifiers into the preliminary statistics, identifiers are revealed that are likely popular content. The server selects one or more identifiers from the preliminary statistics and makes these available to at least a subset of clients. The clients that obtain these one or more identifiers then access content and compute the easy-to-calculate identifiers as usual. If the computed identifier matches one of the identifiers obtained from the server, the client will additionally extract a watermarked identifier or compute a digital fingerprint of the content in question and report this to the server. The server then uses the received identifier or fingerprint to create final statistics by aggregating the preliminary statistics.

Claims14

Dependent claims

A method of a client terminal identifying content available on a network, the content comprising content data and the method comprising:

obtaining a selection of identifiers of a first kind from a content statistics server device, an identifier of the first kind being calculatable and identifying content by means of at least part of the content data;
computing an identifier of the first kind while accessing the content;
matching the computed identifier of the first kind with the identifiers in the selection;
computing an identifier of a second kind if the identifier of the first kind is in the selection, an identifier of the second kind being robust and identifying content on the basis of content characteristics;
sending the identifier of the second kind associated with the identifier of the first kind to the content statistics server device.

2 more elements

A method of a content statistics server device generating statistics associated with content available on a network, the content comprising content data and the method comprising:

receiving an identifier of a first kind indicating the content from a client terminal, an identifier of the first kind being calculatable and identifying content by means of at least part of the content data;
generating preliminary content statistics associated with the identifier of the first kind;
selecting identifiers of the first kind according to a selection criterion based on the generated preliminary content statistics;
providing the selection of identifiers of the first kind to a plurality of client terminals;
receiving an identifier of a second kind identifier associated with the identifier of the first kind from the list from one of the plurality of client terminals, an identifier of the second kind being robust and identifying content on the basis of content characteristics;
aggregating the preliminary content statistics into final content statistics associated with the identifier of the second kind.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Generating statistics of popular content

Life of this patent

Generating statistics of popular content

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims14