Patent Application
20170169454
The invention disclosed herein relates generally to online social networking, and more particularly to a method and system for identifying a business's online social presence by name and address using spatial fillers.
With the rapid adoption of portable processing devices, e.g., smartphones, tablets, and the like, more and more businesses are using social media as an important channel to engage and interact with consumers (B2C) and other businesses (B2B). Accordingly, managing a business presence on social media is becoming strategically more important for businesses of all kinds in order to listen, engage and reach customers (either consumers or other businesses), and to extract additional business insights from social data. However, business information in social media profiles can be incomplete, full of variation and noise, and inconsistent depending on how they are generated and used. This makes it a challenging task to identify the social presence of a business using its known name and address only. Current solutions require either an additional attribute (e.g., a URL), which may not always be available, to resolve social presence identification issues, or deliver a relatively low match accuracy due to the information variation, incompleteness and contextual constraints in social profiles.
The present invention alleviates the problems described above and provides a method and system which can better identify a business's online social presence using a name and address. Gecoding technology is used to enhance business location information with geographic coordinates. A scanning engine is provided that can search a wide range of social media spaces, including, for example and without limitation, FaceBook, Twitter, Yelp, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Blog, etc. to identify the social presence of a business. The search is performed using the business's name and a defined spatial boundary based on the geographic coordinates, thereby reducing the ambiguity caused by information incompleteness and variation in social profiles. Utilizing the spatial filters results in an improved match rate and match accuracy.
The accompanying drawings illustrate presently preferred embodiments of the invention, and together with the general description given above and the detailed description given below, serve to explain the principles of the invention. As shown throughout the drawings, like reference numerals designate like of corresponding parts.
In describing the present invention, reference is made to the drawings, wherein there is seen in
The present invention includes various software engines/processes that can be executed by the computer system 10. It is designed to support a wide range of social media data sources, including, for example and without limitation. FaceBook, Twitter, Yelp, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Blog, etc. A social media scanning engine, which is preferably a standalone Java application, is configured and executed by computer system 10 to crawl through the social media data sources to collect social media data as described below. In general, there are instances when a business is attempting to determine whether or not its business customers (B2B) have a presence on social media sites and exactly how they are identified on those social media sites, also referred to as a social media handle. However, business information in social media profiles can be incomplete, full of variation and noise, and inconsistent depending on how they are generated and used. This makes it a challenging task to identify the social presence of a business using its known name and address only.
Referring now to
Each social media site will be scanned to identify those businesses that match the input criteria, i.e., business name and physically located within the defined spatial boundary. In step 70, the scanning engine obtains data from the social media sites based on the matches identified, e.g. a list of those businesses that match the input criteria along with their social media handles. In step 75, an analytics engine executed on computer system 10 analyzes the data obtained in step 70 to extract information relevant to the original request, e,g., whether the business customer has a presence on a social media site and an identification of their social media handle. This is performed by comparing the returned matches with the input data (business name/address) to determine the best likely match. If more than one match was returned from a social media site, the analytics engine can perform one or more cross-checks with other data to provide the best match. Such other data could include, for example, a telephone number. The collected data and determined matches can be stored in the database 15. Preferably, the data is time stamped for each identification attempt and the result. Additional processes can be performed to review the data collected and provide additional insights into the business, such as those described in application Ser. No. 13/368,515, the contents of which is herein incorporated by reference.
In step 80, a report is generated that includes the information relevant to the original request, i.e., which business customers have a presence which social media sites, and what their social media handle is for those sites, and returned from the computer system 10 the business computer system 30. Because the computer system 10 used geographic coordinates as a filter for searching through the social media sites, any ambiguity caused by information incompleteness and variation in social profiles is significantly reduced thereby resulting in an improved match rate and match accuracy.
While preferred embodiments of the invention have been described and illustrated above, it should be understood that these are exemplary of the invention and are not to be considered as limiting. Additions, deletions, substitutions, and other modifications can be made without departing from the spirit or scope of the present invention. Accordingly, the invention is not to be considered as limited by the foregoing description but is only limited by the scope of the appended claims.
