Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve aspects of social networking, wherein users may establish associations representing relationships with other users, and may share data of interest with all or some associated users. In this context, a user may establish a social profile comprising data that identifies various aspects of the user to associated users, such as demographic information, a set of interests such as hobbies or professional skills, and a set of resources that are interesting to the user. Users may consent to having some aspects of his or her social profile shared; e.g., a user might author a message (such as a personal status, a note about a particular topic, or a message directed to another user) that may initially be accessible only to users who are associated with the user, but may permit an associated user to repost the message for access by all of the users associated with the associated user (e.g., a friend of a user may be permitted to take the user's message and repost it to grant access to the friend's friends.) In this manner, data shared over a social network (and, in particular, data comprising the social profile of a user) may be propagated in select ways to others via the social network.
Also within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a discussion among a set of users about a product (including a manufactured, cultivated, or discovered article or composition of matter, a media item such as a movie, or a tangible or intangible service.) The discussion may also be initiated in many ways (e.g., a user review of a product or a request for such a review, a request for a product recommendation of a product in a particular product area, or a comparison of two or more products in a particular product area), and the comments of the discussion may comprise questions, answers, ideas, comparisons, qualitative opinions, and/or quantitative ratings of particular aspects of one or more products. The conversation about the product(s) may also be shared publicly, e.g., by incorporation in a database of product reviews in a reviews website, or may be restricted to particular users.
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 factors or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
While many computing scenarios may permit a conversation among two or more users about one or more products, many scenarios may appear to be comparatively impersonal. For example, a user may wish to initiate or participate in a discussion of a product, but the other participants in the conversation may be unknown to the user, and may not be able to provide information in view of the particular details of the user. Additionally, the user may be unable to evaluate the reliability of the opinions expressed by the other participants, some of whom may have a biased opinion and/or an interest in skewing the discussion in a particular direction, such as employees of one or more vendors of the products being discussed. Therefore, it may be difficult to obtain information about the products of interest that is personalized for use by the user.
In order to achieve personalized information about a product (such as personalized product recommendations), a user may utilize a social network, e.g., by posting a message viewable by associated users of the user that inquires about a particular product or product area. Associated users who have an association with the user may reply with personalized information about the products, and are more likely to have an interest in providing reliable and accurate information to the user (e.g., in order to preserve the association of the associated user with the user.) In many scenarios, this conversation may utilize the ordinary communications channels of the social network, such as the posting of status messages that together comprise a conversation, or the exchange of private email messages. However, the social network is likely to treat such conversations similarly to conversations about any topic, e.g., as a trivial discussion with only ephemeral value that may be safely discarded after user interest in the discussion wanes. The social network may fail to identify, store, or use the semantics of the conversation in any way.
It may be advantageous to configure the social network to handle conversations about products among the users of a social group in a different and more significant manner than conversations about other topics. As a first example, it may be possible to identify significant information in the comments of a conversation about one or more products, e.g., user opinions or ratings of a product, comparisons of different products, and recommendations of various products in a product area. This information may be compiled to describe the respective products and the product area, and may be stored as a product review data set that users within the social group may examine (possibly at a much later date) to receive relevant information about products in various product areas. These conversations are generated by associated users who are known and trusted by the user, and the associated users may provide information specifically for the user, thereby improving the relevance and personalization of the product information to the user. Moreover, the conversations are restricted to the users of the social group, and are thus kept semi-private, such that users may communicate candidly about the products. As a second example, the social network may facilitate the conversation by inferring structure among the comments (e.g., consolidating all of the comments regarding a particular product, aggregating a set of qualitative or quantitative user ratings of a product into an aggregated user rating for the social group, or inferring a product recommendation of a product by the social group among the comments submitted by the users of the social group), and by prompting users to contribute (e.g., inviting a user of a social group to contribute a product recommendation in a product area or notifying a user of new information in the conversation posted by another user.) These and other techniques may be implemented to utilize the features of the social network to facilitate the conversation of the products by the users of the social group.
To the accomplishment of the foregoing and related ends, the following description and annexed drawings set forth certain illustrative aspects and implementations. These are indicative of but a few of the various ways in which one or more aspects may be employed. Other aspects, advantages, and novel features of the disclosure will become apparent from the following detailed description when considered in conjunction with the annexed drawings.
The claimed subject matter is now described with reference to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals are used to refer to like elements throughout. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the claimed subject matter. It may be evident, however, that the claimed subject matter may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to facilitate describing the claimed subject matter.
Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a social network, comprising a set of users who may establish associations thereamong (representing various types of relationships, e.g., familial, friendship, acquaintanceship, academic, and professional), and who may share data items with other users or social groups of users. Many such scenarios permit a user to post a message (such as a personal status) that may be readable by all associated users who have an association with the user, and such associated users may reply to the message in a manner that is readable by all of the other associated users. Users of a social network may also generate a social profile, comprising a set of data items representing the user, such as demographic information, a set of interests such as hobbies or professional skills, and a set of resources that are interesting to the user. These data items may be shared through the social network with associated users who have an association with the user.
Also within the field of computing, many scenarios may involve a conversation among a set of users of one or more products, such as a manufactured, cultivated, or discovered article or composition of matter, a media item such as a movie, or a tangible or intangible service. The conversation may focus on quality aspects of the product, and may involve user reviews and/or user ratings of the product. The conversation may also be initiated, e.g., by a user posting a comment about a product or requesting information about a product. The conversation may also focus on more than one product, e.g., a comparison of two or more products in a particular product area, which may be initiated by a request by a user for a product recommendation of a product in the product area.
As further illustrated in this exemplary scenario 10, respective users 14 also participate in a social network 22, wherein each user 14 may generate a social profile 24 describing the user 14, and may establish one or more associations 26 with other users 14. Users 14 who have an association 26 may exchange messages 28, and depending on the nature of the respective messages 28, a message may be viewable only by the sender and recipient; by the sender, the recipient, and some or all of the other users who have an association 26 with the sender and/or the recipient; or by anyone who wishes to view the messages 28. By connecting the users 14 in this manner, the social network 22 may facilitate communication and the sharing of data among users 14 based on the associations established thereamong.
The exemplary scenario 10 of
An improvement of this conversation model may be achieved by holding the conversations 16 among the users 14 of the social network 22.
In view of these considerations, a small improvement in the exemplary scenario 10 of
Presented herein are techniques for configuring a social network 22 to promote conversations 16 among users 14 of products 12. According to these techniques, a conversation 16 about one or more products 12 may be initiated by the users 14 of a particular social group 32, such as a user 14 initiating the conversation 16 and all of the associated users who have an association 26 with the user 14. The user 14 may initiate the conversation 16 in many ways, e.g., by requesting a user review of a particular product 12, by creating a user review of a particular product 12, by requesting a product recommendation of a product 12 within a product area 20, or by comparing products 12 within a product area 20. The social network 22 may identify that the conversation 16 is about a particular product 12, and that no conversation 16 about the product 12 or product area 20 currently exists for the social group 32 including the user 14, and may therefore create a record for the conversation 16 in a conversation store (e.g., a storage device, such as a hard disk drive, or a storage structure, such as a database, that is configured to store the comments 18 of conversations 16 about various products 12.) Comments 18 submitted by various users 14 as part of the conversation 16 may then be stored in the conversation store. Additional evaluation may be performed to evaluate the structure and direction of the conversation 16, e.g., to generate a summary of the conversation 16 (such as a consensus user review of the product 12 or a consensus recommendation of a product 12 in the product area 20.) Additionally, when a user 14 of the social network 22 submits a search query about a product 14 or product area 20, the social network 22 may search the conversation store, retrieve any conversations 16 about the product 14 or product area 20 within the social group 32 of the user 14, and present the conversations 16 to the user 14.
These techniques may present some advantages over the use of an unstructured conversation 16 about such products 12, such as a conversation 16 via email, instant messaging, or the ordinary messaging system of the social network 22. As a first example, these techniques may promote the organization of such conversations 16 by consolidating all comments 18 about a particular product 12 among the users 14 of a social group 32 within one conversation 16, and may also facilitate an identification and consolidation of the structure of the conversation 16 (e.g., the responsiveness of particular comments 18 to other comments 18, such as a threaded conversation.) As a second example, the consolidation imparted by these techniques may promote the discoverability of the conversation 16 by the users 14 of the social group 32, e.g., as a searchable database of user reviews of products 12. As a third example, these techniques may promote the evaluation of the conversation 16, such as the determination of a consensus achieved by the social group 32 of the quality of a product 12 or of a consensus recommendation of a product 12 within a product area 20. Other features may also be introduced by storing the conversations 16 in this manner; e.g., by identifying when users 14 take particular consumer actions (such as deciding to purchase a particular product 12 over another product 12) and why the user 14 chose these consumer actions (e.g., as may be identifiable from the comments 18 of a conversation 16), it may be possible to detect the influence of a particular user 14 on the decisions of other users 14 within a social group 32.
Still another embodiment involves a computer-readable medium comprising processor-executable instructions configured to apply the techniques presented herein. An exemplary computer-readable medium that may be devised in these ways is illustrated in
The techniques discussed herein may be devised with variations in many aspects, and some variations may present additional advantages and/or reduce disadvantages with respect to other variations of these and other techniques. Moreover, some variations may be implemented in combination, and some combinations may feature additional advantages and/or reduced disadvantages through synergistic cooperation. The variations may be incorporated in various embodiments (e.g., the exemplary method 70 of
A first aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the scenarios wherein these techniques may be utilized. As a first example, these techniques may be applied to many types of products 12 within many product areas 20, such as manufactured, cultivated, or discovered articles; media items, such as movies; and tangible services (such as manufacturing or repairing an article) or intangible services (such as teaching a subject.) As a second example of this first aspect, these techniques may be utilized within many types of social networks 22 hosting many types of users 14 and associations 26 thereamong, such as a genealogy social network configured to track families, a friendship social network configured to track friends, an academic or professional social network configured to track scholastic or business contacts, a dating social network configured to perform matchmaking services, and a gaming social network configured to connect users to instances of multiplayer games. As a third example of this first aspect, the comments 18 submitted for various conversations 16 may comprise many types of communication, such as instant messages, chat messages within a chat group, enqueued messages such as email, broadcast messages such as personal status messages, images (such as screenshots or photographs of a product 12), audio or video (such as a personal recording of a user review 56), and/or other data objects (such as hyperlinks referencing sources of information about a product 12.)
As a fourth example of this first aspect, various aspects of these techniques may be extended outside the boundaries of the social network 22. In a first such variation, once the social group 32 is defined among the users 14 of the social network 22, various activities among the users 14 outside of the social network 22 may be relevant to the conversation 16 about the product 12, such as messages 28 or user reviews 56 posted by the users 14 of the social group 32 outside of the social network 22 and commercial activities (such as product purchases) that relate to the product 12 but that are performed through e-commerce websites or brick-and-mortar stores. An embodiment of these techniques may be configured to identify these activities performed outside of the social network 22 and to include them in the conversation 16. One such embodiment may achieve this detection and inclusion, e.g., by associating with a user 14 an indicator of the social groups 32 of the social network 22 to which the user 14 belongs, by detecting the indicator of the user 14 while receiving or monitoring the activities of the user 14 outside of the social network 22, and by annotating the conversation 16 to reflect such activities. (This type of variation may be particularly advantageous, e.g., in scenarios where the user 14 provides a social profile comprising part of the identity of the user 14 in engaging in many types of activities.) This information may be tied together, e.g., with search histories and commercial transactions of various users 14, and this bundle of information may be useful in many ways.
As a second variation of this fourth example of this first aspect, the conversation 16 about one or more products 12 may be presented outside of the social network 22. For example, a product reviews database may have access to the conversations 16 of the social network 22 that relate to particular products 12, and may be configured to extract some or all of the comments 18 regarding a product 12 for inclusion in the information set regarding the product 12 that is stored and provided to various users 12. While it may be undesirable to extract and present such comments 18 without the consent of the users 14 (e.g., for conversations 16 held strictly among the members of the social group 32), but the product reviews database may respect these considerations, e.g., by presenting these comments 18 only to the members of the social group 32 (such as a social search engine that, upon receiving a search query submitted by a user 14 and relating to a product, supplements the search results with comments 18 about the product 12 by the members of the social groups 32 to which the user 14 belongs), by anonymizing the comments 18 comprising the conversation 16, and/or by aggregating the comments 18 into excerpts or summaries that do not identify the users 14. This information may also be presented outside of the social network 22 in many contexts, e.g., to supplement search results for search queries that relate to a product 12, to supplement the information about a product 12 offered by an e-commerce site, or to supplement a database of user reviews 56 of the product 12.
As a third variation of this fourth example of this first aspect, third parties that are not members of the social group 32 may be permitted to participate in the conversation 16 in particular ways. For example, a non-member of a social group 32 (such as a product vendor, an independent product review group, a member of another social group 32, or a member of the public) may submit to the social group 32 a request for the social group 32 to discuss a particular product 12; may monitor part or all of the conversation 16 (e.g., by viewing each comment 18 of the conversation 16 or only a summary of the conversation 16, such as an excerpt or aggregated product rating of the product 12); and/or may be permitted to submit comments 18 to the conversation 16. In some such embodiments, the conversation 16 may be supplemented with user reviews 56 submitted outside of the social group 32 and the social network 22, and/or may be merged with other conversations 16 about the product 12 among the members of other social groups 32. In this manner, the conversations 16 and activities by the users 14 of the social group 32 may be related to a particular product 12 in contexts outside of the social network 22, and, conversely, non-members of the social group 32 may be exposed to and may participate in the conversation 16 among the members of the social group 32. Those of ordinary skill in the art may envision many scenarios wherein the techniques presented herein may be utilized.
A second aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the architecture of the embodiment. As a first example, while
A third aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the manner of identifying a social group 32 among the users 14 of a social network 22. As a first example, the social group 32 for a particular conversation 16 may be identified as the set of users 14 comprising the user 14 who initiated the conversation 42 (e.g., a user 14 who submitting a comment 18 regarding a product 12 or product area 20 when no such conversation 16 about the product 12 or product area 20 exists for the social group 32) and all of the users 14 who have an association 26 with the user 14. As a second example of this third aspect, the social group 32 for a particular conversation 16 may comprise a highly interconnected set of users 14, where each user 14 as an association 26 with many of the other users 14 of the social group 32. This social group 32 may be automatically identified, and may comprise the members of a family, a social clique, the students in a class in an academic setting, or the members of a group or department within an organization. As a third example of this third aspect, the social group 32 for a particular conversation 16 may comprise a set of users 14 who share one or more traits (as may be indicated, e.g., by the social profiles 24 of the users 14), such as users 14 who live in a particular geographic region and who share an interest in a particular activity, such as the sport of tennis. As a fourth example of this third aspect, the social group 32 for a particular conversation 16 may be explicitly defined by the users 14, e.g., by self-selection as a member of a social group 32. Some social networks 22 may also permit users 14 of the social group 32 (such as administrators of the social group 32) to add other users 14 to the social group 32 and/or to remove other users 14 from the social group. In particular, it may be advantageous include in the social group 32 an advisor or expert in the product area 20, or a vendor representative of a vendor of a product 12 included in the conversation 16. Moreover, in some such embodiments, it may be possible for the vendor representative to interact with the users 14 of the conversation 16 regarding a product 12 of the vendor in other ways, e.g., by presenting to the users 14 of the social group 32 of the conversation 16 an offer regarding the product 12 discussed in the conversation 16. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many types of social groups 32 and the identification thereof while implementing the techniques presented herein.
A fourth aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the manner of initiating 76 the conversation 16 about one or more products 12 or a product area 20 for the users 14 of a social group 32. As a first example, the conversation 16 may be initiated upon receiving from a user 14 of a social group 32 a comment 18 regarding a product 12, such as a user review request 62 for the product 12 (e.g., “can anyone tell me what this product is like?”), a user review 56 about the product 12 (e.g., “I just bought this product, and here's what I think of it . . . ”), or a user rating 58 (e.g., “I give this product three stars out of five”), when no such conversation 16 has previously been initiated. In accordance with this first example, upon receiving a comment 18 from a user 14 about the product 12, an embodiment may first determine whether a conversation record 108 about the product 12 for any social group 32 including the user 14 exists in the conversation store 42; and if not, the embodiment may initiate in the conversation store 42 a conversation record 108 about the product 12 for at least one social group 32 including the user 14. As a second example of this fourth aspect, the conversation 16 may be initiated upon receiving from a user 14 a comment 18 about a product area 20, such as a product recommendation request (e.g., “can someone recommend a product for me in this product area?”), a product recommendation of a product 12 in a product area 20 (e.g., “among all of the products in this product area, this product has the highest quality”), or a comparison of two or more products 12 in a product area 20, when no conversation 16 about the product area 20 exists in the conversation store 42. For example, upon receiving an initiating request from a user 14 of the social group 20 for a product recommendation of a product 12 in the product area 20, an embodiment may be configured to determine whether a conversation record 108 about the product area 20 for any social group 32 including the user 14 exists in the conversation store 42, and if not, initiating in the conversation store 42 a conversation record 108 about the product area 20 for the social group 32 of the user 14.
As a fourth example of this fourth aspect, a conversation 16 may be initiated about a product area 20, but may also specify one or more product area criteria that limit the products 12 that may be discussed in the conversation 16, such as a geographic criterion (e.g., restaurants within a particular area) or a price criterion (e.g., products 12 within a certain price range.) An embodiment of these techniques may store the one or more product area criteria in the conversation record 108 of the conversation 16. Moreover, an embodiment may be configured to accept comments 18 from users 14 of the social group 32 only if such comments 18 relate to a product 12 fulfilling the at least one product area criterion, and may simply reject comments 18 about products 12 that do not fulfill this product area criterion. In this manner, the conversation 18 may be filtered to selected products 12 meeting limitations desired by the users 14. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many ways of initiating 76 conversations 16 about various products 12 and product areas 20 within social groups 32 of a social network 22 while implementing the techniques presented herein.
A fifth aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the manner of storing 78 a comment 18 in the conversation record 108 of a conversation 16. As a first example, where the conversation 16 relates to a product area 20 limited by at least one product area criterion, the embodiment may evaluate a received comment 18 to verify that it relates to a product 12 satisfying the at least one product area criterion associated with the conversation 16; if so, the embodiment may store the comment 18, but if not, the embodiment may reject the comment 18. As a second example of this fifth aspect, upon storing a comment 18 of a conversation 16 for a social group 32, an embodiment may be configured to notify at least one other user 14 of the social group 32 regarding the comment 18 about the product 12. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many ways of storing comments 18 associated with respective conversations 16 about various products 12 for a social group 32 while implementing the techniques presented herein.
A sixth aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the manner of presenting 80 one or more conversations 16 in response to a presenting request 52 received from a user 14 of the social group 32. As a first example, when a user 14 of a social group 32 submits a presenting request 52 about a product area 20, an embodiment of these techniques may examine the conversation store 42 to identify the conversations 16 about the product area 20 for the social groups 32 of the user 14 (e.g., conversations about the product area 20 in general, or about one or more products 12 in the product area 20.) The embodiment may then present to the user 14 a conversation list that indicates the existing conversations 16 about the product area 20, and the user 14 may select a conversation 16 in the conversation list to view the comments 18 relating thereto. Similarly, a particular product 12 may be the subject of several conversations 16 (e.g., a first conversation 16 about the product 12, a second conversation 16 comparing the product 12 to another product 12 in the product area 20, and a third conversation 16 about all products 12 in the product area 20 that mentions the particular product 12.) This circumstance may also arise, e.g., where a user 14 is a member of at least two social groups 32, each of which has initiated a conversation 16 about the product 12. Therefore, when a user 14 submits a presenting request 52 for conversations 16 about a product 12, an embodiment may identify several conversations 16 about the product 12 in the conversation store 42 for the social groups 32 to which the user 14 belongs, and may also present the comments 18 of each conversation 16 (e.g., upon receiving a user selection by the user 14 of one conversation 16, or by presenting all comments 18 of all conversations 16 in a threaded manner.)
As a second example of this sixth aspect, an embodiment may, upon generating a presentation 54 of a conversation 16 for delivery to a user 14, identify a trend or consensus of the comments 18 of the conversation 16, and may attempt to present a summary or conclusion of the conversation 16 along with the comments 18 in the presentation 54. For example, if several comments 18 in the conversation 16 comprise user reviews 56 of the product 12, the presentation 54 may select one or more of the user reviews 56 (e.g., a user review 56 selected as persuasive by several users 14 in the social group 32) as representative of the product 12, or may attempt to summarize the user reviews 56. Additionally, if one or more comments 18 comprise a user rating 58 of the product 12, an embodiment may compute an aggregated user rating 60 (e.g., as an arithmetic mean, median, or mode among the user reviews 58) for inclusion in the presentation 54. Similarly, if the comments 18 of a conversation 16 appear to reach a consensus view (e.g., with many users 14 agreeing on a recommendation of a product 12 in a product area 20), the consensus view may be included in the presentation 54.
As a third example of this sixth aspect, some comments 18 of the conversation 16 may be identified as responsive to other comments 18 of the conversation 16. For example, a conversation 16 relating a product 12 may involve two comments 18 comprising user reviews 56 of the product 12, but one user review 56 may have been written in response to another user review 56 (e.g., supplementing missing information from the first user review 56 or debating some of the aspects of the first user review 56.) In these and other scenarios, an embodiment of these techniques may identify that at least one second comment 18 in the conversation record 108 has a responsive relationship with a first comment 18 in the conversation record 108, and may present the conversation record 108 as at least one conversation thread comprising the first comment 18 followed by the second comment 18. For example, the conversation 16 may be presented as a tree view, with respective comments 18 presented as nodes of the tree, and where any second comment 18 having a responsive relationship with a first comment 18 is presented as a child node of the node of the first comment 18.
As a fourth example of this sixth aspect, one or more comments 18 of a conversation 16 may indicate a consumer action taken by the author of the comment 18 regarding a product 12 involved in the conversation 16, such as a purchase of the product 12, a sale of the product 12 to another user 14, a use of the product 12 such as a demonstrational use, or a disposal or return of the product 12. These consumer actions may render such comments 18 particularly relevant within the conversation 16, and an embodiment of these techniques may identify the consumer actions associated with respective comments 18 and may, e.g., highlight such comments 18 in the conversation 16. For example, where an action comment in the conversation record 108 of a conversation 16 indicates at least one consumer action taken by the user 14 authoring the action comment regarding at least one product 14, the at least one consumer action taken regarding the product 12 may be presented (e.g., a presentation 54 of a conversation 16 regarding a product 12 may indicate how many users 14 of the social group 32 of the conversation 16 have purchased the product 12.)
As an additional variation of this fourth example of this sixth aspect, some consumer actions may have been taken in response to the comments 18 of another user 14 in the conversation 16; e.g., a first user 14 may purchase a product 12 after receiving a product recommendation of the product 12 from a second user 14. An embodiment of these techniques may, while evaluating the conversation 16, detect both the consumer action of the first user 14 indicated in a first comment 18 and a preceding comment 18 by a second user 14 to which the first comment 18 was responsive, thereby indicating a potential influence of the preceding comment 18 and the second user 14 upon the first user 14. This identification of influence may be useful in many ways, e.g., to indicate a particularly influential user review 56 of the product 12 or to track the influence of a particular user 14 as a measure of the persuasiveness of the user 14 or the expertise of the user 14 in a particular product area 20. The embodiment may also notify the second user 14 of the influence of the second comment 18; e.g., where an action comment has a responsive relationship with a first comment 18 by a first user 14 and indicates a consumer action by the user 14 authoring the action comment that was taken in response to the first comment 16, an embodiment may be configured to notify the first user 14 of the consumer action taken by the user 14 authoring the action comment in response to the first comment 18.
As a fifth example of this sixth aspect, the presentation 54 of a conversation 16 may include, along with the comments 18 of the conversation 16 that are personalized for the users 14 of the social group 32 (such as personalized product reviews 64), one or more public information items that are not particular to or personalized for the social group 32. This information may be used to supplement the conversation 16 either upon request of a user 14 of the social group 32, or automatically (e.g., upon initiating a conversation 16 regarding a product 12, or upon receiving a comment 18 about a product 12 to be added to a conversation 16, an embodiment may retrieve a public review of the product 12 from a product review database to be included in presentations 54 of the conversation 16.) This variation may be advantageous, e.g., for supplementing the conversation 16 with information about products 12 from expert sources that may be more informed or reliable than the users 14 of the social group 32, or by providing information about a product 12 that the users 14 of the social group 32 have not utilized, or about which the users 14 of the conversation 16 have not yet contributed a comment 18.
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.
As used in this application, the terms “component,” “module,” “system”, “interface”, and 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. The term “article of manufacture” as used herein is intended to encompass a computer program accessible from any computer-readable device, carrier, or media. 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 not required, embodiments are described in the general context of “computer readable instructions” being executed by one or more computing devices. Computer readable instructions may be distributed via computer readable media (discussed below). Computer readable instructions may be implemented as program modules, such as functions, objects, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), data structures, and the like, that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Typically, the functionality of the computer readable instructions may be combined or distributed as desired in various environments.
In other embodiments, device 172 may include additional features and/or functionality. For example, device 172 may also include additional storage (e.g., removable and/or non-removable) including, but not limited to, magnetic storage, optical storage, and the like. Such additional storage is illustrated in
The term “computer readable media” as used herein includes computer storage media. Computer storage media includes volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions or other data. Memory 178 and storage 180 are examples of computer storage media. Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by device 172. Any such computer storage media may be part of device 172.
Device 172 may also include communication connection(s) 186 that allows device 172 to communicate with other devices. Communication connection(s) 186 may include, but is not limited to, a modem, a Network Interface Card (NIC), an integrated network interface, a radio frequency transmitter/receiver, an infrared port, a USB connection, or other interfaces for connecting computing device 172 to other computing devices. Communication connection(s) 186 may include a wired connection or a wireless connection. Communication connection(s) 186 may transmit and/or receive communication media.
The term “computer readable media” may include communication media. Communication media typically embodies computer readable instructions or other data in a “modulated data signal” such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” may include a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal.
Device 172 may include input device(s) 184 such as keyboard, mouse, pen, voice input device, touch input device, infrared cameras, video input devices, and/or any other input device. Output device(s) 182 such as one or more displays, speakers, printers, and/or any other output device may also be included in device 172. Input device(s) 184 and output device(s) 182 may be connected to device 172 via a wired connection, wireless connection, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, an input device or an output device from another computing device may be used as input device(s) 184 or output device(s) 182 for computing device 172.
Components of computing device 172 may be connected by various interconnects, such as a bus. Such interconnects may include a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), such as PCI Express, a Universal Serial Bus (USB), firewire (IEEE 1394), an optical bus structure, and the like. In another embodiment, components of computing device 172 may be interconnected by a network. For example, memory 178 may be comprised of multiple physical memory units located in different physical locations interconnected by a network.
Those skilled in the art will realize that storage devices utilized to store computer readable instructions may be distributed across a network. For example, a computing device 190 accessible via network 188 may store computer readable instructions to implement one or more embodiments provided herein. Computing device 172 may access computing device 190 and download a part or all of the computer readable instructions for execution. Alternatively, computing device 172 may download pieces of the computer readable instructions, as needed, or some instructions may be executed at computing device 172 and some at computing device 190.
Various operations of embodiments are provided herein. In one embodiment, one or more of the operations described may constitute computer readable instructions stored on one or more computer readable media, which if executed by a computing device, will cause the computing device to perform the operations described. The order in which some or all of the operations are described should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent. Alternative ordering will be appreciated by one skilled in the art having the benefit of this description. Further, it will be understood that not all operations are necessarily present in each embodiment provided herein.
Moreover, the word “exemplary” is used herein to mean serving as an example, instance, or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as advantageous over other aspects or designs. Rather, use of the word exemplary is intended to present concepts in a concrete fashion. As used in this application, the term “or” is intended to mean an inclusive “or” rather than an exclusive “or”. That is, unless specified otherwise, or clear from context, “X employs A or B” is intended to mean any of the natural inclusive permutations. That is, if X employs A; X employs B; or X employs both A and B, then “X employs A or B” is satisfied under any of the foregoing instances. In addition, the articles “a” and “an” as used in this application and the appended claims may generally be construed to mean “one or more” unless specified otherwise or clear from context to be directed to a singular form.
Also, although the disclosure has been shown and described with respect to one or more implementations, equivalent alterations and modifications will occur to others skilled in the art based upon a reading and understanding of this specification and the annexed drawings. The disclosure includes all such modifications and alterations and is limited only by the scope of the following claims. In particular regard to the various functions performed by the above described components (e.g., elements, resources, etc.), the terms used to describe such components are intended to correspond, unless otherwise indicated, to any component which performs the specified function of the described component (e.g., that is functionally equivalent), even though not structurally equivalent to the disclosed structure which performs the function in the herein illustrated exemplary implementations of the disclosure. In addition, while a particular feature of the disclosure may have been disclosed with respect to only one of several implementations, such feature may be combined with one or more other features of the other implementations as may be desired and advantageous for any given or particular application. Furthermore, to the extent that the terms “includes”, “having”, “has”, “with”, or variants thereof are used in either the detailed description or the claims, such terms are intended to be inclusive in a manner similar to the term “comprising.”