The present invention relates to electronic social networks (ESNs), and more specifically, to automated relationship management for electronic social networks.
Electronic social networks support people in establishing and electronically representing relationships with friends, colleagues, etc. While relationships with other ESN users can be easily established, conventional electronic social networks provide very limited support for managing the changing nature and quality of an established relationship over time. For example, in a conventional electronic social network, the user manually tracks all his/her relationships with other ESN users and continually assesses whether the quality of the ESN relationships appropriately reflects the quality of the actual relationships. These conventional electronic social networks do not provide mechanisms for the users to manage their ESN relationships in a realistic and time-efficient manner. Therefore, the ESN relationship often does not appropriately reflect the actual relationship between the ESN users, thus the value of the ESN to the user is often less than it could be with proper support of relationship management through the ESN.
The present invention provides an electronic social network which enables automated management of relationships within the electronic social network.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a computer-implemented method of automatically managing relationships between a plurality of users within an electronic social network is provided. The method includes monitoring interactions between the plurality of users in relationships within the electronic social network over time, and obtaining interaction information associated with the monitored interactions, and automatically updating and managing access privileges of users based on the obtained interaction information, to access profile information of respective users.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a computer program product comprising a computer useable medium including a computer readable program, wherein the computer readable program when executed on a computer causes the computer to implement a method of automatically managing relationships between a plurality of users within an electronic social network is provided. The method includes monitoring interactions between the plurality of users in relationships within the electronic social network over time, and obtaining interaction information associated with the monitored interactions, and automatically updating and managing access privileges of users based on the obtained interaction information, to access profile information of respective users.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, an electronic social network system is provided. The electronic social network system includes a plurality of user interfaces, a network, and a server in communication with the plurality of user interfaces via the network. The server is operative to monitor interactions between the plurality of users in relationships within the electronic social network system over time, and obtain interaction information associated with the monitored interactions, and automatically update and manage access privileges of users based on the obtained interaction information, to access profile information of respective users.
Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention. For a better understanding of the invention with the advantages and the features, refer to the description and to the drawings.
The subject matter which is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The forgoing and other features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
With reference now to
The embodiments of the present invention allow for automatically managing ESN relationships between users within the ESN system 10. The ESN system 10 performs an automated method for updating and managing relationship information between the users within the ESN system 10.
According to embodiments of the present invention, the quality of a relationship between user u and user u′ is characterized based on the accessible profile information shared between the users u and u′. In addition, the quality of the relationship may also be characterized based on ratings of metrics predefined by the user or system, associated with each user as disclosed in application Ser. No. 12/246,632 filed on Oct. 7, 2008, and entitled “ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC SOCIAL NETWORK” by Müller and Sommer, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety and made a part hereof (additional details to be discussed further below). According to one embodiment, the server 12 monitors interactions between the plurality of users u and u′ over time and performs a method for automatically managing relationships between a plurality of users within the ESN system 10, as shown in the flowchart in
As mentioned above, according to an embodiment of the present invention, the access privileges of a user may be varied based upon the duration of the relationship between the users such that as the duration of the relationship increases, the amount of access privileges automatically increases. For example, as the duration of the relationship between two users increases, the server 12 automatically reveals more of the user's attributes to the other user in the relationship and vice versa. According to an embodiment, the user may preset settings which include, for example, name and address information, and the user may specify a time period and/or a frequency for which the server may reveal additional attributes within the user's profile information. Alternatively, the system 10 may set default settings or they may be set by a combination of both the user and the system. For example, the user may preset a minimum amount of time to pass before a contact may access additional attributes of the user's profile information.
Further, as mentioned above, the access privileges may also vary based upon an amount of communication between users over time such that as the amount of communication between the users increases, the amount of access privileges automatically increases, and as the amount of communication between the users decreases, the amount of access privileges automatically decreases. For example, if the users have not communicated with one another for a predetermined period of time such as a period of one year, the access privileges granted to the user may be automatically decreased. According to an embodiment, the server senses an amount of communication between the users. The communication between users may include, for example, at least one of email communication, text messaging and telephone communication. Therefore, according to an embodiment of the present invention, the user's telephone system and/or email system, for example, is integrated with the ESN platform. According to an embodiment of the present invention, email communication may be implemented by a plug-in in the mail client or an integration with the email server and text messaging may be implemented using messaging tools such as Skype and MSN Messenger, for example. The present invention is not limited to any particular form of communication between the users, and may vary accordingly. The contextual information may include geographic location information including location proximity between the users. The present invention is not limited hereto, therefore, and any other type of attribute factors may also be taken into consideration.
According to an embodiment of the present invention, accessing of predetermined profile information is determined after a user has been admitted as a contact of a respective user for a predetermined period of time and after a predetermined number of interactions have occurred between the users. For example, if a user u′ has been a contact of user u for approximately six months and during this time period user u′ and user u have had approximately 10 interactions, then predetermined attributes of user u's profile information will become accessible to user u′ and vice versa. The predetermined attributes may be default settings by the system or user settings or a combination of both.
Further, as mentioned above, according to an embodiment of the present invention, the access privileges may be varied based on ratings of the users on various metrics such as trust or confidence. According to one embodiment, the ratings are determined based on how a user is rated among other users in a relationship with the same user within the ESN system. For example, if other users rate the same user as high on the metric of “trust” then the access privileges for that user will be updated such that the system reveals more profile information of a respective user to that user.
Further in
Further, according to an embodiment, ratings of a user by other users may be a factor when automatically updating rating information. For example, if other users rate specified metrics of the same user u′ consistently high, the ratings of the specified metrics rated by user u for user u′ may be increased if they are low, or if other users rate specified metrics for user u′ very low then the ratings of the specified metrics by user u for user u′ may be decreased if they are high. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the ratings are automatically updated at appropriate predetermined time intervals such as once every week or once a month, for example.
Further, any combination of the above-mentioned predetermined factors may be used to initiate automatically updating of rating information corresponding to a user within the ESN system. When (a) predetermined factor(s) mandate(s) a rating update, an appropriate action is triggered to perform the actual adjustments of the ratings such as decreasing or increasing the rating, for example. For example, if the predetermined factor is communication between the users and if it is determined that for at least 4 months there have been 10 communications per month between the users in a relationship within the ESN system and there has not been an update triggered by this predetermined factor for one month, the metric “trust” is updated by 0.1, which means that for every one month, the metric “trust” is updated by 0.1 when conditions on the communication between the users are met. As mentioned above, these metrics may be system-defined, user-defined or a combination of both. By automatically updating of ratings of users over time, the ESN relationships of users are better managed and higher priority is given to active relationships.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, pro-active nurturing is provided to the users within the ESN system. Pro-active nurturing is the pro-active managing and nurturing of established relationships between users within the ESN system. The ESN system suggests to the user to perform activities that may help keep the relationships strong and to provide tools and execute workflows to support the user in carrying out these activities. Pro-active nurturing may be initiated based on a number of triggering events. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the triggering events may be any events dependent on certain variables reaching a specific state where the variables represent all the relevant data for the event for all involved users such as ratings, communication history of the users, location of the users, idle time of the relationship or any contextual information, for example. In
Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system for automatically managing ESN relationships to ensure automated, adequate and dynamically changing representation of relationships in an ESN system, thereby greatly increasing the value of the ESN system to the user. The present invention also provides ways to pro-actively maintain and improve existing relationships or prevent them from decaying.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the invention. As used herein, the singular forms “a”, “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” and/or “comprising,” when used in this specification, specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, element components, and/or groups thereof.
The corresponding structures, materials, acts, and equivalents of all means or step plus function elements in the claims below are intended to include any structure, material, or act for performing the function in combination with other claimed elements as specifically claimed. The description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, but is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention and the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated
The flow diagrams depicted herein are just one example. There may be many variations to this diagram or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order or steps may be added, deleted or modified. All of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
While the preferred embodiment to the invention had been described, it will be understood that those skilled in the art, both now and in the future, may make various improvements and enhancements which fall within the scope of the claims which follow. These claims should be construed to maintain the proper protection for the invention first described.