Aggregate provider for social activity feeds and contact information

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9754326-B2
Application number	US-201113293493-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 10, 2011
Priority date	Nov 10, 2011
Publication date	Sep 5, 2017
Grant date	Sep 5, 2017

Abstract

A method is presented for obtaining contact information on a client computer. A request is received to display contact information for a person on an email application running on the client computer. A determination is made as to whether third party contact information is available for a user of the email application. Instructions are obtained from a server computer for obtaining the third party contact information from a third party computer associated with a social network. Instructions are obtained from the server computer for formatting the third party contact information on the client computer. Using the instructions from the server computer for obtaining the third party contact information, the third party contact information is obtained from the third party computer. Using the instructions from the server computer for formatting the third party contact information, the obtained third party contact information is formatted and displayed on the client computer.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for obtaining contact information on a client computer, the method comprising:
on the client computer, receiving a request to display social networking information for a user on an email application running on the client computer;
determining via the email application whether an account for a social network associated with the user is available to the user of the email application;
when a determination is made via the email application that the account for the social network is available to the user:
obtaining from a server computer instructions for obtaining third party social networking information from a third party computer associated with the social network, the server computer being different than the third party computer;
obtaining from the server computer formatting instructions for formatting the third party social networking information to be compatible with a user interface of an email application on the client computer;
using the instructions from the server computer for obtaining the third party social networking information from the third party computer;
aggregating the third party social networking information with other contact information of the email application;
using the formatting instructions from the server computer for formatting the aggregated third party social networking information to be displayed in the user interface of the email application; and
displaying the other contact information and formatted third party social networking information, having been aggregated together, via the user interface of the email application on the client computer.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein receiving a request to display social networking information for the user comprises determining that an activation event has been detected at the client computer, the activation event comprising a selection or an identification of the user on the client computer.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the activation event comprises selecting an email message on the email application.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining whether an account associated for the social network is available to the user of the email application comprises determining whether a user ID and a password for accessing the third party computer has been entered for the user in the email application.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the instructions for obtaining third party social networking information from the third party computer includes one or more application programming interface commands for connecting to the third party computer.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising obtaining from the server computer a list of available social networks.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the third party social networking information includes activity feed data for the user.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising obtaining third party social networking information and activity feed information from one or more additional third party computers and aggregating the third party social networking information and activity feed data from the one or more additional third party computers on the client computer.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising identifying the third party social networking information and activity feed data from each of the one or more third party computers via an icon displayed with the third party social networking information and activity feed data, the icon and the third party social networking information and activity feed data displayed on a user interface of the email application, the icon representing a social network corresponding to one of the third party computers.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the third party social networking information is integrated with contact information from the email application.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein obtaining formatting information from a server computer comprises obtaining instructions from the server computer for transforming the third party social networking information into a format compatible with the client computer.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the instructions include one or more rules for transforming the third party social networking information into a format compatible with display on the email application of the client computer.

13. The method of claim 11 , wherein the instructions are in the form of a style sheet or script.

14. The method of claim 11 , further comprising obtaining versioning information for the third party social networking information.

15. An electronic computing device comprising:
a processing unit; and
system memory, the system memory including instructions that, when executed by the processing unit, cause the electronic computing device to:
receive a request to display social networking information for a user;
determine via the email application whether an account for a social network associated with the user is available to the user of an email application running on the electronic computing device; and
when a determination is made via the email application that the account for the social network is available to the user:
request the third party social networking information for the user from a server computer, the server computer being different than a third party computer associated with the social network;
receive third party social networking information from the server computer, the third party social networking information received from the server computer comprising contact information for the user from social networks and formatting instructions for formatting the third party social networking information to be compatible with a user interface of an email application;
aggregate the third party social networking information with other contact information of the email application;
use the formatting instructions for formatting the aggregated third party social networking information to be displayed in the user interface of the email application; and
display the other contact information and formatted third party social networking information, having been aggregated together, via the user interface of the email application on the electronic computing device.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein receiving a request to display social networking information for a user comprises determining that an activation event has been detected at the client computer, the activation event comprising a selection or an identification of the person on the email application on the client computer.

17. The method of claim 15 , wherein determining whether an account for a social network associated with the user is available for the user comprises determining whether a user ID and password has been entered for the user in the email application running on the client computer.

18. The method of claim 15 , further comprising obtaining activity feed data from the server computer.

19. The method of claim 15 , wherein the third party social networking information received from the server computer is formatted and ready to be displayed on the user interface of the email application.

20. A computer readable storage device, not including a propagated signal, comprising instructions that, when executed by an electronic computing device, cause the electronic computing device to:
receive a request to display social networking information for a user on an email application running on the electronic computing device, the request comprising determining that an activation event has been detected

Assignees

• Franco Roberto Anthony
• Varshney Govind
• Burukhin Anatoliy
• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• Franco Roberto Anthony
• Varshney Govind
• Burukhin Anatoliy

Classifications

• G06Q10/40 Primary

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

• G06Q50/01 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06Q10/107

  Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing] · CPC title

• H04L51/56

  Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM] · CPC title

• H04L51/52 Primary

  for supporting social networking services · CPC title