Patent Application
20050154764
The present invention relates to a system to enable a consumer to access at least one content item, which is provided by one or more content providers, via a network.
Such content items, also referred to as entertainment items or generally referred to as content, might include audio content and/or text content and/or audio/video content, which is provided by one or more content providers, to at least one consumer via a network.
Networks have become ubiquitous these days. Telephone networks, computer networks, cellular networks are part of life. These networks, once separate entities, commingle to form means for the transport of data to any connected device.
The networks enable people access to data, data that informs and entertains. Once information and entertainment items that suit the information needs, the entertainment wants and the personal tastes are found by a consumer, access of the content is performed and the consumer has to pay the content provider for the supplied content.
The applicant developed a Personal Media System (PMA), which is an entertainment product offering
The PMA service is offered to end-consumers over any data network, e.g.:
The PMA service is available on any capable device, e.g.:
The service offered is either of
Therefore, a sophisticated structure to supply content to consumers is given. A charging for such services is made via credit cards, specially arranged accounts or via other contracts. In general, a group of users that subscribed in some way to a certain content provision service might be regarded as a community to which in principle the same service is available.
However, in general no or only limited special community services, i.e. services that allow the interaction of community members, are offered.
Therefore, it is the object underlying the present invention to enhance a community service in respect to content, which is provided by one or more content providers to a community of subscribers to this content service, i.e. to at least one consumer, via a network.
This object is solved by a content provision service method to enable a consumer to access at least one content item, which is provided by one or more content providers, via a network according to independent claims 1, by a corresponding content provision service device according to independent claim 9, by consumer content access device according to independent claim 14, by a corresponding consumer content access method according to independent claim 17, by a user content recommendation device according to independent claim 20, and by a corresponding user content recommendation method according to independent claim 22. Respective preferred embodiments thereof are respectively defined in the respective following sub-claims. A computer program product according to the present invention is defined in claim 24 and a computer accessible storage medium according to the present invention is defined in claim 25.
Therefore, the content provision service method to enable a consumer to access at least one content item, which is provided by at least one content provider, via a network, according to the present invention comprises the steps of:
Therewith, the present invention provides the possibility for sending a content item, e.g. a song, and/or a group of content items, e.g. a playlist and/or a channel, to a friend who is also a member of the community, i.e. a user who e.g. actually uses the content service recommends e.g. a currently accessed content item to another community member, i.e. the (possible) consumer of the recommended content item. Therewith, the proposed community service establishes a function that allows community members to exchange their musical taste with other community members, e.g. a friend/buddy. Of course, not only individual songs, playlists, i.e. a certain number of songs, and channels, i.e. an endless sequence of e.g. songs described by a certain selection profile, might be exchanged, but also all other kinds of comparable content items or groups of content items, e.g. news, texts, visual content, etc.
Preferably, in this method according to the present invention the user gets enabled to recommend said content item(s) by
Such an identifier according to the present invention enables an unambiguous identification of single content items and also of groups of content items, e.g. a certain number of content items or also an endless sequence of content items fulfilling certain criteria. On basis of the assigned identifier the single content item or group of content items can be retrieved.
Further preferably, in this method according to the present invention the user gets enabled to forward at least one of said at least one transmitted characteristic information item to the consumer by a messaging service.
Such a messaging service allows the automation of the recommendation procedure and therewith in particular the possibility to easily communicate a recommendation. An example could be that a user currently listens to a song which he or she wants to recommend to a friend. In this case the messaging service might be initiated by depressing of a particular button on the used content access device, e.g. a mobile phone, and then be executed with the display of at least a part of the corresponding characteristic information item, e.g. the song title and the artist, and the request to enter the name, number, address, . . . of the friend, i.e. the consumer, and then to depress a send button to the user. Alternatively or additionally further preferably, in this method according to the present invention the consumer gets enabled to select said recommended content item(s) and to retrieve the selected content item(s) via the network by the steps of:
As indicated above, a content service provider might be used by the content provider to manage the distribution of the content. In respect to the present invention the content provider and the content service provider are comparable, i.e. have equal functions, namely to enable the selection and retrieval of content. The content service provider might aggregate the content of several content providers. Also, the content service provider might offer a more sophisticated service than the content provider, since the focus lies more in the service around the content and not in the content as such, which is the focus of the content provider.
In case a content service provider is arranged between content provider and user/consumer, the identifier might get assigned and managed by the content service provider. Then, also an identifier that gets selected by the consumer gets communicated to the content service provider who might perform an access and content provider check and then transmits the content item(s) corresponding to said identifier to the consumer.
The identifier according to the present invention comprises and/or points to
Such a characteristic information item might include the title, length, genre, artist, actuality, . . . of a corresponding content item, i.e. information to generally identify the content item and/or parameters that describe how the recommending user obtained the content item, e.g. a user profile of the recommending user. Further, the characteristic information item might also include information of the community within which said corresponding content item is available and/or information from which content provider and/or service provider said corresponding content item is available. With such information a content provider or service provider, which manages the contents of several content providers, might determine whether or not a content item requested by a consumer based on its corresponding characteristic information item can and might be supplied to this particular consumer. In other words, it can be determined whether or not the content provider or service provider that is addressed by the consumer can offer this content item at all, and further it can be determined whether or not the consumer subscribed to the community that is allowed to retrieve the particular content item.
The above possibilities for the identification cover the recommendation of single content items or groups thereof as well as a whole user profile which allows the customer to adapt thereto and to e.g. receive the same personalized content items as the recommending user.
The identifier according to the present invention enables a short transmission of a link to a characteristic information item in respect to the particular content item(s) or directly to the content item(s), since the characteristic information item(s) might be rather complex, in particular in case of a the user profile.
Therefore, in the method according to the present invention, preferably a user profile of the user gets copied to that of the consumer in case the characteristic information item corresponding to said communicated identifier is a user profile of the user.
As indicated above, this allows the community of users not only to share single content items, but also refined user profiles that reflect a particular, maybe very special personal taste. This sharing of single content items, groups of content items, or even user profiles might serve as an important factor in selling the content items to the community of users, i.e. to achieve acceptance of the content provision concept at the user side. The copying might be performed directly at the time of recommendation or alternatively at the time the consumer communicates said identifier to the content service provider or content provider.
Alternatively, as a more soft method, the user profile of the consumer might get adapted according to the characteristic information item, in particular in case the characteristic information item corresponding to said communicated identifier is for one content item or a group of content items, but also in case said characteristic information item is a user profile.
The method according to the present invention preferably comprises the step of:
With the provision of such clients or devices, an easy and uncomplicated manner of communication of the users and consumers with a content delivering server as described above is secured. In contrast to specially adapted devices, clients according to the present invention are preferably software implementations of the consumer content access method and/or the user content recommendation method as defined in the following that get implemented into existing communication devices.
Correspondingly, the content provision service device, comprising:
In the content provision service device according to the present invention preferably said user recommendation unit comprises
In said preferred embodiment of the content provision service device according to the present invention preferably said consumer recommendation retrieval unit comprises
Further, in said content provision service device according to said preferred embodiment alternatively or additionally the identifier comprises and/or points to
In this case, the content provision service device according to the present invention preferably further comprises
A consumer content access device to enable a consumer to access at least one content item, which is provided by at least one content provider, via a network, comprising
In the consumer content access device according to the present invention preferably said recommended content item retrieval unit comprises
In the consumer content access device according to the present invention further preferably the identifier selection unit comprises
Correspondingly, a consumer content access method to enable a consumer to access at least one content item, which is provided by at least one content provider, via a network, comprising the step:
The consumer content access method according to the present invention further preferably comprises the steps of:
The consumer content access method according to the present invention still further preferably comprises the step of enabling the consumer to select an identifier comprises the steps of:
A user content recommendation device, comprising
In the user content recommendation device according to the present invention preferably the recommendation unit comprises
Correspondingly, a user content recommendation method, comprising the step of:
The user content recommendation method according to the present invention preferably further comprises the step of enabling the user to recommend at least one content item and/or a group of content items relating thereto to the at least one consumer comprises the steps of
The computer program product according to the present invention comprises computer program means adapted to perform the respective method steps as set-out above when being executed on a computer, digital signal processor or the like.
The computer readable storage means according to the present invention stores thereon a computer program product according to the present invention.
The respective user content recommendation method and/or consumer content access method according to the present invention is preferably implemented on a
It is further to be noted that the user content recommendation device as set-out above preferably comprises the features of the consumer content access device as set-out above and vice versa, i.e. that any member of the community can share his/her retrieved content with any other member of the community.
As indicated above, the method in particular enables sharing of
The present invention in particular uses and defines the concept that content recommended by a user is retrieved from the consumer from the content provider (either directly or via a content service provider). Further, the recommended content items are identified by way of unambiguous identifiers that can be easily communicated and might point to more complex characterizing information items used to retrieve the content items or directly to the content items.
For a better understanding of the invention and to further elucidate the invention, its features, objects and advantages, an exemplary preferred embodiment thereof is described in detail by way of example while making reference to the accompanying drawing, wherein:
As indicated above, content does refer to any information and entertainment item in one media format or the combination of multiple media formats. Media Formats may be audio, video, images, pictures and text. One piece of content, e.g. one song, one news article, one movie, etc., is generally referred to as a content item.
The example shown in
In particular,
In this send to buddy or send a song mode 3, which is shown in
After insertion of the destination of the recommendation, e.g. via a telephone book function, and upon depression of the send button 7, the receiver indicates a new received song recommendation 8 in its inbox 9, as shown in
Upon selection of the newly received song recommendation 8 by the friend, i.e. the customer, a new display is generated by the content output device of the customer, which shows the song title 4 and the song artist 5 of the recommended selected song 2a, an output field 10 indicating the origin of the recommendation, e.g. the telephone number of the user from whom the song was recommended, a listen button 11, and a save button 12, as shown in
This song received display enables the consumer to access at least one content item, here the received selected song 2a, which is provided by one or more content providers, via a network. Instead of a single song the user could alternatively or additionally recommend the current playlist and/or channel. A playlist can be a recommended as a list of single songs, since it comprises a predetermined number of content items. A channel can be recommended based on a channel reference so that the consumer receives whatever is next.
However, the recommendation of a playlist and/or a channel might also be realized differently to the recommendation of a single song. This different recommendation is based on a communication of the parameters used to generate the playlist or set-up the channel. Of course, also a reference to these parameters might be communicated. In an individualized content retrieval system, these parameters might be the user profile of the recommending user, which is then used by the consumer to retrieve at least parts of the recommended content. In other words, the consumer adapts to a ‘recommended user profile’. A further adaptation of this recommended user profile by the consumer might also be possible, i.e. the consumer might use the recommended user profile only as an initial user profile and then has the possibility to further refine the recommended user profile according to his/her wishes.
The customer can decide whether to immediately listen to the recommendation by depressing the listen button 11, or to save the recommendation by depressing the save button 12 and to later retrieve the recommendation.
The content access interface 16 serves users, i.e. general users of the system that consume content items and also recommend content items, and consumers, i.e. general users of the system that receive a content item recommendation and consume the recommended content items, to access the content items available in the content database 17.
The user recommendation unit 15 generally enables a user to recommend content items. It comprises a user profile 19 of the user (or an access to said user profile), an assignment unit 15a and an identifier transmission unit 15b. The assignment unit 15a assigns a respective identifier to each single content item accessed by the user, to each group of n content items accessed by the user, and to each endless group of content items, i.e. channel, the user accesses. Therefore, the assignment unit 15a is connected to the content database 15 and receives an indication of the accessed content item(s) to define identifiers for accessed single content items and groups of n content items and to the user profile 19 of the user to define an identifier for a channel of content items accessed by the user on basis of his/her user profile. The assigned identifiers are communicated to the identifier transmission unit 15b that transmits the assigned identifiers to the user device corresponding to the accessed content items.
The user device, in the following referred to as user content recommendation device 21 (due to this main functionality according to the invention), comprises a content reception unit 22 and a recommendation unit 23. The content reception unit is connected to the content access interface 16 of the content provision service device 13 and receives selected content for provision to the user. The recommendation unit 23 comprises an identifier reception unit 23a that receives identifiers corresponding to the received content. When the user wants to recommend a single content item, a group of n content items, or a channel of content items, a capturing unit 23b captures the corresponding identifier and passes it to a forwarding unit 23c that forwards the captured identifier to a consumer who should receive the recommendation from the user.
The consumer device, in the following referred to as consumer content access device 24 (due to this main functionality according to the invention), comprises a recommended content item retrieval unit 26 and a communication unit 25. The communication unit 25 enables the consumer content access device 24 to retrieve selected content from the content access interface 16 of the content provision service device 13, as will be described in the following. The recommended content item retrieval unit 26 comprises an identifier reception unit 26a to receive identifiers forwarded from the or another user. The identifier reception unit 26a passes all received identifiers to a presentation unit 26b for display that enables extraction of selected identifiers by an extraction unit 26c, both last units are included in an identifier selection unit that is also included in the recommended content item retrieval unit 26. The extracted identifiers are communicated by an identifier communication unit 26d (that is also included in the recommended content item retrieval unit 26) to an identifier reception unit 14a of the content provision service device 13 via the communication unit 25.
The identifier reception unit 14a is included in the consumer recommendation retrieval unit 14 of the content provision service device 13. Identifiers received by the identifier reception unit 14a are forwarded to an identifier interpreter 14b of the consumer recommendation retrieval unit 14 that is connected to the content database 17 and a user profile copying unit 18. In case the identifier interpreter 14b receives an identifier for a single content item or a group of n content items, the content items will be identified to the content database 17 and transmitted to the communication unit 25 of the consumer content access device 24 via the content access interface 16 of the content provision service device 13. In case the identifier interpreter 14b receives an identifier for a channel of content items, an indication is given to the user profile copying unit 18 to copy the user profile 19 of the user to the user profile 20 of the consumer. This new user profile of the consumer is then used to retrieve a content item channel from the content database 17 that gets transmitted to the communication unit 25 of the consumer content access device 24 via the content access interface 16 of the content provision service device 13.
After the user recommends his/her channel that is set-up according to his/her user profile 19 in a following third step S3, the user profile 19 of the user gets copied for the consumer to serve as (initial) consumer user profile 20 in a following fourth step S4. Then, in a following fifth step S5 a content item channel is set-up for the consumer based on his/her new user profile 20 and the content items of this channel are communicated to the consumer content access device 24. The consumer can then refine his/her user profile 20 by giving a feedback.
Since a content item channel might generally depend also on other criteria besides the user profile, the content items, e.g. songs, within both of the above described channels, i.e. that of the user and that of the consumer, might be different.
As indicated above, the present invention in particular uses and defines the concept that content recommended by a user is retrieved from the consumer from the content provider (either directly or via a content service provider), i.e. the content items are not directly communicated from the user to the consumer. Further, the recommended content items are identified by way of unambiguous identifiers that can be easily communicated and might point to more complex characterizing information items used to retrieve the content items or directly to the content items.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 03026994.8 | Nov 2003 | EP | regional |
