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US 9,870,424 B2Granted
Social network based contextual ranking
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorsEugene (John) Neystadt, Ron Karidi, Yitzhak Tzahi Weisfeild, Roy Varshavsky, Avigad Oron, Kira Radinsky
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A ranked set of users may be calculated from an expertise categorization for each user and a person's trust in the users for specific categories. The ranked set of users may be used for presenting search results, recommendations, social marketing, or other uses. A person's reputation may be determined through various online activities. A person's trust in another person may be related to their proximity and activity in one or more social networks.
Claims20
A method implemented by an influence manager operating on at least one computer hardware platform, comprising:
- receiving a plurality of usage context;
- receiving a request comprising a first category and a first user;
- crawling a social network comprising said first user to identify a first set of persons having a reputation level associated with said first category;
- for each person in said first set of persons:
- determining by the influence manager using the at least one computer hardware platform, an influence factor for said first category based at least in part on a strength of relationships within said social network between said first user and said person in said first set of persons, wherein the strength of the relationships is based upon a variable scoring of the strength of the relationship;
- ranking said first set of persons based at least in part on said influence factor;
- providing the ranked first set of persons to at least one application operating on a computer system for consumption by the application;
- filtering or ranking, via the at least one application, the results of a query based on the ranked first set of persons to generate a customized set of search results;
- and
- presenting, via the at least one application, the customized set of search results in response to the query, wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one computer processor.
7 more elements
A system comprising:
- one or more computer systems, each computer system having at least one processor and one memory device;
- the one or more computer systems configured to provide;
- a reputation scorer operating on at least one of the computer systems, the reputation scorer, using the at least one computer system, searches for a first category to identify persons related to said first category and determines a reputation rating for said persons relating to said first category;
- and
- an influencer analyzer operating on at least one of the computer systems, the influence analyzer, using the computer system, configured to:
- search a social network for persons having said reputation rating for said first category;
- determine a strength of a relationship between a first user and the identified persons, wherein the strength of the relationship is a variable strength of the relationship based upon an analysis of various relationships between the first user and the identified persons;
- determine an influence score for said persons based at least in part on the determined strength of the relationship;
- and
- rank said persons based in part on said influence score;
- and
- an application operating on at least one of the computer systems, the application, using the computer system, configured to:
- filter or rank the results of a query based on the ranked said persons to generate a customized set of search results;
- and
- present the customized set of search results in response to the query.
12 more elements
A method comprising:
- receiving a plurality of categories;
- for each of said plurality of categories:
- searching a set of documents for a category to identify a plurality of persons associated with said category;
- for each of said plurality of persons, determining by a computer system a reputation level for a person after searching online references for said person, said reputation level being based on explicit actions performed by said person and feedback performed by other persons relating to said person;
- receiving a request comprising a first category and a first user;
- searching a social network comprising said first user to identify a first set of persons having said reputation level associated with said first category;
- for each person in said first set of persons:
- determining by the computer system a trust factor based at least in part on a strength of relationships within said social network between said first person and said person in said first set of persons, wherein the strength of the relationship is a variable strength of the relationship based upon an analysis of various relationships between the first user and the identified persons;
- ranking said first set of persons based at least in part on said trust factor;
- providing the ranked first set of persons to at least one application for consumption by the application;
- filtering or ranking, via the at least one application, the results of a query based on the ranked first set of persons to generate a customized set of search results;
- and
- presenting, via the at least one application, the customized set of search results in response to the query, wherein the preceding steps are performed by at least one computer processor.
10 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.