Patent Application
20130110808
People attend a wide variety of events over the course of their life. For instance, spectator events such as sporting events, entertainment events (e.g., concerts, theatre, films) and the like have become a multibillion dollar a year business throughout the world. As one example, millions of people attend their favorite sporting events, choosing among baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey, football, tennis, golf, auto racing, horse racing, boxing, and many others. Rather than merely watching sporting events on television, fans are willing to pay for the privilege of attending such events live in order to enjoy the spontaneity and excitement.
Some of the events people attend may have nostalgic importance. For this reason people often retain and collect memorabilia of events. Some people even keep a physical box or other container in which they store such memorabilia such as a ticket stub to a particularly memorable sporting event, concert, theatrical event and the like. However, physical ticket stubs and the like have limitations that make them less than ideal as items of memorabilia.
Some of the limitations of physical tickets are the following. Physical tickets fade over time, take up space, and are easily lost. Physical tickets do not provide any additional context to the event (e.g. pictures, final score, concert set lists, etc.), are not easily searchable and are not conveniently shared with friends. As tickets to events are more commonly being issued digitally, there is no easy way to retain them for nostalgic purposes.
in one implementation, a cloud-based service is provided which can store collections of event memorabilia associated with events a user has attended. The event memorabilia may include details about the event provided by the user such as images and notes as well as information made available directly to the service by one or more parties associated with the event. The service may automatically obtain the information from the parties once the user has indicated, to the service that it is an event the user has or will attend. The service maintains the information it has obtained from the user and from other sources as metadata that it associates with a user profile that has been established for the user. The user can search or browse the metadata to locate information about previously attended events, as can other users authorized by the user. In this way one user can locate other individuals who have or will attend an event or events that the user has attended or will attend. In some implementations, the service may obtain information about users from social networking sites to which the users belong. In this way users may share information about themselves with other users who have similar interests and who have attended the same or similar events.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.
At the outset it should be understood that the term “event” as used herein refers to a place or location at which an activity takes place. An event or activity generally takes place at a venue, which may include, by way of illustration, stadiums, theatres, museums, casinos, cruise ships, theme parks, agricultural fairs or similar expositions, trade shows, conventions, or the like.
The events or activities that take place in a venue may be associated with specific and defined programmatic content having an identifiable duration, such as the content provided by an athletic event, a musical or theatrical performance, or the like. On the other hand, attendees experience some events or activities while patronizing avenue such as a museum, casino, cruise ship, theme park, agricultural fair, trade show, convention, or the like, which may or may not include specific programmatic content having a generally defined duration as part or all of the activity. In some instances, the totality of activities has a duration bounded by opening and closing hours of a museum, park, fairgrounds, convention hall, or the like. In other forms of entertainment, e.g. at casinos, activity often continues around the clock. It is to be understood that the present invention relates to events and activities either with or without the foregoing specific programmatic content and defined duration.
As detailed below, a cloud-based service is provided which can store collections of event memorabilia associated with events a user has attended. The service can also automatically associate metadata with the events that are stored. For example, if the event is a sports events, the final scores and various statistics may be stored as metadata. Likewise, if the event is a concert, the metadata that is stored may include the set list or musical numbers. The metadata may be automatically obtained by the service from the venue at which the event is being held, a content provider associated with the venue, the event sponsor or the event producer, and so on. Often a pre-arranged contractual agreement may be in place between the service and the content provider in order for the service to obtain the metadata. In addition, the service may allow the user to optionally share and compare event memorabilia with other individuals, either through social networking services such as Facebook Xbox Live® or through the cloud-based service itself.
Event attendees and other users may login and logout of the service.
The screen shot 100 shown in
The events view 110 allows the user to browse his or her past events, search for an event they previously attended and view, add and edit event details. Users may also be able to associate images from the event and add additional notes and comments, which may provide details of the event as experienced by the user.
The schedule view 120 provides a list of upcoming events that a user is scheduled to attend in chronological order by date. The events may be presented in a fashion similar to a calendar application. When an event is clicked on, information about the event may cover, for example, a portion of the screen. Along with the name of the event, an addition piece of information that may be provided in the schedule includes, for example, a summary of the performer(s) and/or the content to be presented at the event.
If the user selects the people tag 130 in
If the attendee selects the profile navigation tag 140 shown in
Each field in the user's profile may be shared with all other attendees or only with various subsets of attendees by appropriate selection from a pulldown menu 270 associated with the various fields.
Once the attendee's profile is complete the data contained therein (including data contained in the attendee's social networking profile(s)) may serve as metadata or tags that can be searched by other attendees or used by the on-line system to make various recommendations of events and activities that may be of interest to the attendee. For instance, as shown in
In some implementations the user may be able to subscribe to receive notifications (e.g., e-mails) about a recommended event or the performer, team, etc., participating in the event directly from the page of recommendations provided by the on-line system.
Each client device 404 can be a variety of different types of devices. For example, a client device can be a desktop computer 402, a mobile communication device, an entertainment appliance, a set-top box communicatively coupled to a display device, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a game console, an automotive computer, and so forth. Thus, each client device can range from a full resource device with substantial memory and processor resources (e.g., personal computers, game consoles) to a low-resource device with limited memory and/or processing resources (e.g., traditional set-top boxes, hand-held game consoles),
Client devices 404 receive services over network 406 that are provided by event memorabilia system 410. System 410 may include different types of computing devices such as one or more servers, for instance.
Operating environment 100 may also include one or more social networking systems 412, one or more venues 414 in which events are held and event content providers 416.
A user may use the event memorabilia system 410 to perform a wide variety of tasks, a few of which have been described above and are summarized below. The event memorabilia system 410 provides the client device with the web pages described above. Illustrative features that may be offered by the event memorabilia system 410 include the following.
1. The event memorabilia system 410 can maintain a history of the events users have attended.
2. Events may be automatically added to the user's history after a ticket or other proof of admission to the event has been purchased and can be linked to the user, which may occur when a ticket is purchased by phone or online, when a user enters the event and uses their client device for ticket redemption (e.g., via a near field communication device incorporated into the client device) or when the user checks in to the venue by other suitable means.
3. Users can manually enter events into the event memorabilia system if tickets have been purchased non-electronically and are thus unable to be automatically added to the user's history.
4. For each event in the user's history, the event memorabilia system would maintain event metadata (including, but not limited to, the final score and game highlights for a sports event, a set list for a concert, a cast list for a show, etc.). The event metadata can be provided to the event memorabilia system by the venue itself or by a content provider acting in cooperation with the venue, the event promoter and/or another third party.
5. The event memorabilia system may provide an interface through which the user can add notes, pictures and comments which are to be associated with the events included in their event history.
6. Users can browse, search or otherwise view their collection of events and associated metadata maintained by the event memorabilia system to reminisce and optionally share and compare their event collection with their friends.
7. The event memorabilia system can recommend other events the user may be interested in based on the previous events they attended and possibly the user profile. Such events can be identified in a variety of different ways, such as by using information and recommendations from other users who have attended similar events and information obtained from the content providers and the social networking sites.
8. The event memorabilia system may also offer various social networking capabilities including, by way of example:
9. The event memorabilia system may reward loyal fans of a performer, team, etc., based on the number of events they attend for that performer, team, etc. For instance, if the system can confirm the number of events a user attends, typically by receiving notification that the user has registered for au event, the user can be given recognition for the achievement. For instance, a user may be recognized for attending all the home games of the Seahawks or attending all the performances by Coldplay on their North American tour. The recognition may take the form of an acknowledgment displayed on the user's profile, and in some cases may optionally include a reward such as a cash back rebate, reward points (which may be redeemed to purchase any of a variety of products and services associated with the performer or team), coupons, certificates and the like.
One example of the event memorabilia system 410 shown in
As described above, the functionality of the event memorabilia system has been described as a cloud-based service. In some implementations, however, some or all of the functionality of the event memorabilia system may be an application located on a client device such as a desktop computer, a mobile communication device, an entertainment appliance or game console and the like.
As used in this application, the terms “component,” “module,” “engine,” “system,” “apparatus,” “interface,” or the like are generally intended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, a combination of hardware and software, software, or software in execution. For example, a component may be, but is not limited to being, a process running on a processor, a processor, an object, an executable, a thread of execution, a program, and/or a computer. By way of illustration, both an application running on a controller and the controller can be a component. One or more components may reside within a process and/or thread of execution and a component may be localized on one computer and/or distributed between two or more computers.
Furthermore, the claimed subject matter may be implemented as a method, apparatus, or article of manufacture using standard programming and/or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof to control a computer to implement the disclosed subject matter. For instance, the claimed subject matter may be implemented as a computer-readable storage medium embedded with a computer executable program, which encompasses a computer program accessible from any computer-readable storage device or storage media. For example, computer readable storage media can include but are not limited to magnetic storage devices (e.g., hard disk, floppy disk, magnetic strips . . . ), optical disks (e.g., compact disk (CD), digital versatile disk (DVD) . . . ), smart cards, and flash memory devices (e.g., card, stick, key drive . . . ). Of course, those skilled in the art will recognize many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope or spirit of the claimed subject matter.
Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.
