Social Sketches

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016379232-A1
Application number	US-201514752781-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jun 26, 2015
Priority date	Jun 26, 2015
Publication date	Dec 29, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

Systems and methods for generating a social sketch from social communications are provided. Unlike a typical summary of a subject (or of multiple subjects), a social sketch represents a “snapshot” summary of the social communications of people during a given period of time. The social sketch is generated by obtaining a corpus of social communications and filtering the social communications according to time. The filtered results are clustered according to the subject matter/topics of the social communications. Selected clusters are identified and the topic, representative high-quality social communications from non-experts and experts are extracted from each of the selected clusters and saved as a social sketch corresponding to the time period.

First claim

What is claimed:

1 . A computer-implemented method for generating a social sketch corresponding to a time period in response to a request, the method comprising:
obtaining social communications from a social networking service, the social communications including social communications generated during a first time period; filtering obtained social communications according to the first time period such that the filtered social communications correspond to the social communications generated during the first time period; clustering the filtered social communications according to the subject matter of the social communications to generate a plurality of clusters of filtered social communications, each cluster corresponding to a topic; identifying a set of clusters of the plurality of clusters of social communications, each of the clusters of the set of the plurality of clusters of social communications being an identified cluster; for each identified cluster:
extracting a topic from the identified cluster according to the subject matter of the social communications of the identified cluster;
identifying a non-expert set of high-quality communications from the identified cluster, the non-expert set of high-quality communications corresponding to social communications of non-experts on the topic of the identified cluster;
identifying an expert set of high-quality communications from the identified cluster, the expert set of high-quality communications corresponding to social communications of experts on the topic of the identified cluster;
wherein the topic, the non-expert set of high-quality communications, and the expert set of high-quality communications comprise a cluster set of the identified cluster; and
storing the cluster sets of each of the identified clusters as the social sketch corresponding to the identified time period.

2 . The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising, for each of the identified clusters:
re-clustering the identified cluster of social communications;
identifying a set of sub-clusters of the identified cluster; and
extracting a sub-topic from each of the identified sub-clusters of the set of sub-clusters of the identified cluster;
wherein the topic, the non-expert set of high-quality communications, the expert set of high-quality communications, and the extracted sub-topics comprise a topic set of the identified cluster.

3 . The computer-implemented method of claim 2 further comprising, for each of the identified clusters:
identifying a representative image of the identified cluster from the social communications of the identified cluster;
wherein the topic, the non-expert set of high-quality communications, the expert set of high-quality communications, the extracted sub-topics, and the representative image comprise a topic set of the identified cluster.

4 . The computer-implemented method of claim 3 , wherein identifying the set of clusters of the plurality of clusters of social communications comprises identifying those clusters of the plurality of clusters of social communications that have a sufficient volume of social communications within the cluster.

5 . The computer-implemented method of claim 4 , wherein the plurality of clusters of social communications that have a sufficient volume of social communications within the cluster comprises those clusters whose volume of social communications within the cluster exceeds a predetermined number.

6 . The computer-implemented method of claim 4 , wherein the plurality of clusters of social communications that have a sufficient volume of social communications within the cluster comprises those clusters whose volume of social communications within the cluster exceeds a predetermined percentage of all of the social communications for the time period.

7 . The computer-implemented method of claim 4 , wherein the plurality of clusters of social communications that have a sufficient volume of social communications within the cluster comprises a predetermined number of clusters that have the greatest number of social communications of the plurality of clusters.

8 . The computer-implemented method of claim 3 , wherein identifying a set of sub-clusters of the identified cluster comprises identifying the set of sub-clusters according to any one or more of:
a threshold volume of social communications within the sub-cluster, a threshold percentage of the volume of social communications of the cluster within the sub-cluster, or a threshold number of sub-clusters that have the greatest volume of social communications within the sub-cluster.

9 . The computer-implemented method of claim 2 further comprising:
receiving a search query regarding the time period;
identifying a set of search results relevant to the time period, the set of search results including results of topics not found with the social sketch corresponding to the time period;
obtaining the social sketch corresponding to the time period;
generating a search results page, the search results page including:
at least some of the identified set of results relevant to the time period; and
a social sketch view, the social sketch view including a plurality of user-actionable controls, each user-actionable control identifying and corresponding to a social sketch topic of the social sketch corresponding to the time period; and

returning the generated search results page to a requesting party in response to the search query.

10 . The computer-implemented method of claim 2 further comprising:
receiving a search query regarding a first topic;
identifying a set of search results relevant to the first topic;
determining whether the first topic corresponds to a topic of the social sketch and, upon determining that the first topic corresponds to a topic of the social sketch:
generating a search results page, the search results page including:
some of the identified set of results relevant to the time period; and
a timeline information block, the timeline information block including at least one user-actionable control, the at least one user-actionable control comprising a snippet of information representative of the first topic as occurred during the time period of the social sketch; and

returning the generated search results page to a requesting party in response to the search query.

11 . The computer-implemented method of claim 2 further comprising:
receiving a search query regarding a first topic and the time period, wherein the first topic corresponds to a topic of the social sketch;
identifying a set of search results relevant to the first topic;
generating a search results page, the search results page including:
at least some of the identified set of results relevant to the first topic; and
a social sketch view, the social sketch view comprising the topic of the social sketch, at least some of the non-expert set of high-quality communications from the identified cluster, and at least some of the expert set of high-quality communications for the identified cluster; and

returning the generated search results page to a requesting party in response to the search query.

12 . The computer-implemented method of claim 11 , wherein the social sketch view further comprises a user-actionable control linking the current social sketch view to a social sketch view corresponding to a social sketch of another time period that includes the first topic, wherein the user-actionable control linking the current social sketch view to a social sketch view corresponding to a social sketch of another time period is configured to cause to replace the social sketch view corresponding to

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Alonso Omar
• Tremblay Serge-Eric
• Kandylas Vasileios

Classifications

• G06Q10/40

  Business processes related to social networking or social networking services · CPC title

• G06Q10/00

  Administration; Management · CPC title

• G06F16/9535

  Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation · CPC title

• G06F16/447

  Temporal browsing, e.g. timeline · CPC title

• G06Q30/0204 Primary

  Market segmentation · CPC title