Patent Application
20250022023
The present invention relates generally to methods, systems, devices and software products (computer program products) for creating and maintaining a transactional platform and network for offering, providing, selling and purchasing services, content and time, wherein the transactional platform utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI).
There exists a need for platforms and networks for facilitating the efficient offering, providing, selling and purchasing of services, content and time.
The present invention provides, among other aspects, methods, systems, devices and software products (computer program products) for creating and maintaining a transactional platform and network for offering, providing, selling and purchasing services, content and time, wherein such transactional platform and network utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The present invention, utilizing AI, can be practiced in conjunction with the Transactional Platform configurations, methods and systems disclosed and claimed in the commonly-owned patent and patent applications listed above and incorporated herein by reference.
However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art and relevant areas of technology that the inventive subject matter described herein, utilizing AI, can also be practiced in conjunction with transactional platforms and networks other than those disclosed and claimed in the above-listed commonly owned patent and patent applications.
Aspects, examples, embodiments and practices of the invention, whether in the form of methods, devices, systems or computer program code products (software or computer program products) will next be described in greater detail in the following Summary of the Invention and Detailed Description of the Invention, in conjunction with the attached drawing figures.
Exemplary embodiments and practices of the invention provide systems, devices, methods and computer program code (software) products for, among other aspects and possible applications, enabling a provider to provide time, services or content to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the time, services or content provided.
In various embodiments and practices of the invention, a transactional platform and network in accordance with the invention utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The following Summary, and the Detailed Description section that follows, first describe embodiments and practices of the invention relating to the Transactional Platform configurations, methods and systems disclosed in the above-listed, commonly-owned patent(s) and patent applications, referred to collectively as “ZeitMarket” (ZM), and then describe further configurations, methods, systems, embodiments and practices, utilizing AI, collectively referred to herein as the “AIZA Platform”, wherein the acronym AIZA stands for “Artificial Intelligence ZeitArbeit”, i.e. Artificial Intelligence Temporal Work. The term “temporal work” is used herein to denote work done on a payment-per-unit-of-time basis, rather than on a fixed employer/employee basis.
The present invention, utilizing AI, can be practiced in conjunction with the ZM Transactional Platform configurations, methods and systems disclosed and claimed in the commonly-owned patent and patent applications listed above, including those disclosed and claimed in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 11,651,401.
However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art and relevant areas of technology that the subject matter described herein, utilizing AI, can also be practiced in conjunction with transactional platforms and networks other than those disclosed and claimed in the above-listed commonly owned patent and patent applications.
In the event of an inconsistent description between the AIZA Platform descriptions in this document and the ZM-related descriptions either herein or in any of the documents incorporated herein by reference, the ZM-related descriptions shall be considered supplementary to the AIZA Platform descriptions set forth herein, and the AIZA Platform descriptions set forth herein shall control.
This Summary of the Invention section is organized into the following subsections: ZM Transactional Platform; and AIZA Platform.
In one aspect of the invention, relating to the ZM Transactional Platform, the invention includes a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs (“apps”) executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the following:
In another aspect, the invention enables a provider to sell his time to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the time provided. In this aspect, the invention includes a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the following:
Another aspect of the invention enables a provider to sell his time or services to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the time or services provided. In this aspect, the invention includes a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the following:
Another aspect of the invention enables the supervision of the Provider's providing of time or services to the Consumer. The supervision can include a provision for display, on a display screen, of a representation of services or time being provided by the Provider to the Consumer. The supervision can also include a provision for video monitoring of the Provider in providing services or time to the Consumer. This may also include recording and verification of on-line/off-line or start/stop times of the Provider in providing services or time in an offline manner to the Consumer.
In another aspect of the invention, a metric of demand for a given provider's time, services or content is utilized by the server to modify a specified maximum price of the provider's time, services or content.
In a further aspect, the server can utilize a selected metric of demand for the Provider's time, services or content (“Success”) to modify a specified maximum price of the provider's time, services or content, wherein “Success” is a metric comprising the product of productivity multiplied by workload, wherein productivity is a ratio of actual price to maximum price, multiplied by a ratio of quantity sold to quantity offered, wherein quantity is a quantity of time.
Another aspect of the invention includes a specified Success Threshold; and positive modification of the specified maximum price occurs after measured Success exceeds the Success Threshold for a time period of at least a specified Observation Period.
In another aspect, negative modification of the specified maximum price occurs after measured Success is less than a specified negative triggering threshold for a time period of at least a specified Observation Period, wherein the negative triggering threshold is a function of the Success Threshold and the specified maximum price.
In a further aspect of the invention, as “Success” increases, the system increases the calculated maximum price.
Another aspect of the invention includes calculating a monetary compensation component for a system-providing entity, the monetary percentage being based on a percentage of service fees generated on the system.
A further aspect of the invention enables a user to create and maintain a fictional identity (Persona) for use in transactions, wherein user-to-user and Provider/Consumer interaction is implemented through Personas, and wherein the Personas comprise Provider Personas and Consumer Personas. The user can be enabled to have the Persona be anonymous, in that the Persona does not reveal or indicate the user's real-world identity. Alternatively, the user can elect to have the Persona be visible to (i) no other users of the system, (ii) a selected set of other users of the system, or (iii) all other users of the system. Still further, the user can create and maintain multiple Personas for use on the system, and the multiple Personas may have different levels of anonymity and visibility to other users, and be associated with providing or purchasing of different services or content.
In a related aspect, a system, practice or computer program product (software) implementation of the invention can be configured to enable consumers of services, content or time via the system to remain anonymous to providers in the system; wherein providers in the system may opt to be anonymous to consumers of their services, content or time via the system.
The invention can also include a user database that functions as an intermediary between data corresponding to a given Persona, and a billing facility.
In one aspect of the invention, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention is configured so that all communications carried on the system between users of the system are treated as chargeable communications that incur a monetary fee. A given user can designate selected other users, or groups of users, of the system as “Friends” of the given user, wherein any communications carried on the system between users of the system, other than designated conversations between “Friends,” are treated as a chargeable communication.
In a related aspect, a Consumer can use the system to charge a monetary fee in exchange for engaging with advertising content presented to the Consumer by an advertising Provider (an “Advertiser”). The invention can also enable the Advertiser to pay the Consumer a system-calculated value of the Consumer's time to engage with the Advertiser's advertising content.
A method, computer program product (software) or system according to the invention can calculate a system revenue component based on a percentage of fees Providers charge Consumers for provider services, content or time received via the system, plus a percentage of fees Consumers charge Advertisers for time spent by the Consumers engaging with advertisements via the system; and can calculate a system revenue component based on a subscription fee charged by a system-providing entity to users of the system.
In one aspect of the invention, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention is adapted for deployment inside a business enterprise for establishing an enterprise-internal marketplace for time.
In one aspect of the invention, respective client application programs communicate with a cloud-based system application program.
The client devices can include cellphones, tablets, laptop computers or desktop computers. The delivering of a communications session can be on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis. The delivering of a communications session on a one-to-many basis can be on a one-to-many-simultaneously (mass audience) basis. The invention can enable a Provider to set a minimum number of audience members, below which the communications session will not be delivered. The Provider can also set a minimum overall price, below which the communications session will not be delivered. In addition, the invention can set a fixed overall price, such that a greater number of audience members results in a lower price per audience member; or a fixed audience member price, such that a greater number of audience members results in a larger overall Provider payment.
In another aspect of the invention, a Provider can provide services, content or time via the system in exchange for monetary fees that are paid via the system, either to the provider or in selected part to a charity designated by the Provider.
In a further aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention enables a user to reject advertising content, or to accept selected advertising content in exchange for a monetary fee payable via the system to the Consumer. A user can engage in a bi-directional conversation with a market research entity, via the system, in exchange for a fee payable to the user via the system.
Another aspect of the invention includes a Provider Finder that enables a user to search for a Provider meeting certain criteria set by the user. In one aspect, the Provider Finder provides and optimizes a category tree and order of search results that the user sees when conducting a search for a provider.
In another aspect of the invention, a selected number of hours and types of communications between designated Friends are exempt from monetary charges.
A further aspect of the invention includes a scheduler function, for scheduling a communications session, the scheduler function being operable in conjunction with a user's selected calendar utility. The scheduler function can be operable to indicate communications session scheduling conflicts, and enter appointments and reminders for communications sessions in the user's selected calendar utility.
Another aspect of the invention includes carrying privacy-protected commercial conversations, wherein the conversations are securely encrypted for protection from eavesdropping and data analysis by any party, including any administrator of the system and any system-executed software algorithms. The conversations can include any of speech, text, video, images, documents or music, static or dynamic content.
In a further aspect of the invention, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention enables a Real-time Private Conversation, via the system, between individual users, or between groups of users. A user can provide fee-based services, via the system, to one or more clients simultaneously via a Real-time Private Conversation.
In another aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention collects a monetary fee from the Consumer and pays the Provider his fee, less a system commission calculated by the system and payable to a system function-providing entity.
In other aspects, the invention enables a communications platform for a user to create a social network, and enables a communications platform for a user to create a commercial network.
In a further aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention enables a Provider to create and maintain at least one Provider Persona for use on the system to interact with a Consumer, wherein the system calculates a maximum rate that a given Provider Persona may charge (“Maximum Rate”) for providing services, content or time via the system.
In one related aspect, the sum of time provided by all Provider Personas of a given Provider is limited by the system to less than or equal to a system-selected Daily Maximum, wherein the selected Daily Maximum is a system-selected percentage of 24 hours.
In a further aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention, (a) the system utilizes a metric of demand for a Provider Persona's time, services or content (“Success”) to modify a previously-calculated Maximum Rate for the Provider Persona; (b) “Success” is a metric comprising the product of productivity multiplied by workload, wherein productivity is a ratio of actual price to maximum price, multiplied by a ratio of quantity sold to quantity offered, wherein quantity is a quantity of time; and (c) the system enables the Provider Persona to charge the Maximum Rate, a pre-selected Discount Rate applicable to a plurality of Consumers, or a discounted rate negotiated with a given Consumer.
In a related aspect, the server determines the Provider Persona's Maximum Rate based on Provider Persona-specific sales data. The sales data comprises time slots offered, time slots purchased, and prices paid for time slots. The system maintains a Maximum Rate scale divided into tiers of increasing price (“Price Levels”), and each Provider Persona at a given Price Level has the same Maximum Rate. The server periodically executes a calculation, based in part on the Provider Persona's Success metric, as to whether to raise, lower, or leave unchanged the Provider Persona's Price Level and Maximum Rate. The system is operable to increase or decrease the ease or difficulty of earning a higher Price Level, to maintain a selected target distribution of Price Levels of Provider Personas within the system. An initial fee announced to be charged by a Provider Persona, via the system, establishes that Provider Persona's initial Price Level within the system. Adjacent Price Levels define a Price Range of a given Price Level, which is bounded by the Maximum Rate of the given Price Level and the Maximum Rate of the Price Level below the given Price Level.
In a related aspect of a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention, (a) the system publishes price information for Provider Personas; (b) a new Provider Persona can select, via the system, his initial Price Level and an initial published price within the Price Range corresponding to the selected initial Price Level; (c) the new Provider Persona's selected initial Price Level, associated Maximum Rate and initial published price are designated, by the system, as “Tentative”; (d) after selected observation and adjustment by the system, the Provider Persona's Maximum Rate is designated, by the system, as “Established” at a Price Level where the Provider Persona's observed Success is at or above a system-selected minimum value; and (e) thereafter the established Maximum Rate for the Provider Persona are published by the system and subsequently can only be changed by the system.
In a further related aspect, the system defines categories of Provider Personas, and wherein a Provider Persona can charge, via the system, an initial fee that corresponds to a defined Base Level defined by the system for providers of that category, or a higher, tentative fee during an initial probation period. The system can designate categories of certified professional providers (CPPs). A CPP of a given category can charge, via the system, an initial fee that is the standard base level defined in the system for certified professional providers of that category. A CPP can offer, to the system, credentials and evidence that a fee they already charge outside of the system, which is higher than the standard base level defined in the system, meets fair market standards, and upon system approval the CPP can charge, via the system, their higher rate. System approval can be generated by a system-executed software algorithm. Alternatively, system approval can be entered into the system by a human system administrator. The system can propose a lower rate to the CPP, and the CPP can elect, via the system, to charge either the system-proposed lower rate or, upon system approval, the CPP's higher rate, and wherein the higher rate is designated the CPP's default rate.
In one aspect, the invention includes an Application Layer, a Services Layer, and an Infrastructure Layer.
The Application Layer can include social network, communication, Persona, scheduling, and payment functions. The Application Layer can also include cross-platform and multi-device application functions.
The Services layer can include software services for secure identity, secure communication, scheduling, and Provider pricing functions. Provider pricing functions can include Maximum Rate calculation functions.
The Infrastructure Layer can include business and operations data, secure financial transactions, and scalable system architecture.
In a further aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention enables a Provider to create, via the system, different Provider Personas to provide services in different service categories. In a related aspect, a Provider can create, via the system, different Provider Personas to provide the same service, or different Provider Personas to provide different services in the same service category, wherein the amount of time or service collectively provided by the multiple Provider Personas owned by the same Provider is limited by the system to a selected quantity.
In a further aspect, a method, computer program product or system implementation of the invention enables a user to adjust settings, via the system, to indicate temporal availability of a given Persona to enter into a communications session. Temporal availability can include one of the following availability states: available any time, available if using this device, available now, and unavailable. A user can associate availability states with selected future time slots of a calendar maintained by a scheduling function of the system for the user.
In another aspect, the invention provides a Persona Database and a directory comprising a user view of the Persona Database; provides a search function enabling users to search, in the Persona Database, for Personas and Providers, based on selected search terms; enables users to browse, within the system, a directory of public Personas; enables users to browse the directory of public Personas, within the system, using search options, the search options comprising sorting and filtering. The sorting and filtering can include sorting and filtering by Providers' availability states and published price. The invention can organize directory entries in accordance with visibility parameters, such that a given Persona is visible only to a selected set of other Personas.
In other aspects, the invention provides a saved contacts list and a recent contacts list; a server-based system scheduling calendar, wherein the system scheduling calendar provides alerts to prevent double-booking of time slots and tools to reconcile appointments across multiple Personas of a given user.
In another aspect of the invention, a user can create a User Persona, wherein blocks of a given User Persona's time can be made graphically visible to other User Personas on a public calendar section of the system scheduling calendar, while other blocks of a given User Persona's time can be kept private. A User Persona can set selected priority levels for different blocks of available time in the system scheduling calendar, wherein the priority level indicates which blocks of time the User Persona prefers to be booked first. The system scheduling calendar can provide a graphical timeline operable to display a User Persona's past events and completed tasks, and future events.
In another aspect of the invention, the Services Layer comprises a server-based module or function that determines a Maximum Rate for a given Provider, based on the Provider's sales data maintained in the system.
In another aspect of the invention, server or system communications with and between users is encrypted. Communications with system infrastructure can be implemented through an SSL/TLS method. Communications between users of the system utilizes a public/private key method, wherein the key material never leaves the user's device. At least part of the key material can be one-time-use key material.
In other aspects of the invention, a given user can elect to have a given Persona owned by the given user be either listed or unlisted; a Persona can be anonymous, wherein an anonymous persona does not indicate the Persona owner's real-world identity; a user who owns an unlisted Persona can elect to reveal the Persona to selected other Personas; an owner of a listed or unlisted Persona can selectively permit or block visibility of the owned Persona to any other designated Personas.
In other aspects of the invention, the owner of an unlisted Persona can permit visibility of the owned Persona to other Personas in a specified range of Price Levels below and up to a Price Level of the owned Persona; visibility of a Persona in a higher Price Level can be enabled for a Persona of lower Price Level if the Persona of lower Price Level purchases a selected amount of credit for services, content or time of the higher Price Level Persona; and references to an unlisted Persona on the system are blanked or otherwise obscured to any Persona without permission to view the unlisted Persona.
In a further aspect, the invention comprises a Communications Infrastructure Layer, and the Communications Infrastructure Layer comprises communications encryption and privacy settings functions, billing detail functions, personal contact lists, text-based conversations and history, audio and video chat functions, and document sharing functions. The Communications Infrastructure Layer can also include a shared white board function, auxiliary interactive graphics, the ability to share the user's screen or window of another application, real-time text-based chat function, and check-in/check-out timestamp functions to measure offline activities performed by a Provider or a Provider Persona.
In other aspects of the invention, intra-system network traffic is strongly point-to-point encrypted; intra-system communications comprise videoconferencing functions; and intra-system communications can also include text messaging, voice communications or voice messaging.
In a further aspect, the invention provides a server/cloud infrastructure for telecommunications, comprising a cloud-based network of infrastructure nodes that serve as a local point of connection for each user. Intra-system communications incur a communications fee based on the target Persona's Maximum Rate or an agreed-upon lower rate. In another aspect, intra-system communications incur a communications fee less than or equal to the target Persona's Maximum Rate. In another aspect of the invention, the recipient of the communications is paid, via the system, the communications fee minus a system-provider compensation component, thereby to compensate the recipient for his time.
In related aspects of the invention, the Maximum Rate of a Provider Persona in a real-time communications session defines a maximum allowable price of the session; the price to send a text message within the system compensates the recipient Persona for a typical time required for a human reader to read and respond to a text message; the price to send the text message is based on the recipient Persona's Price Level and the size of the message; the invention is operable to generate a display of real-time cost information to the user generating the message, to indicate the communications cost of sending the message; the recipient of a message receives revenue for reading and responding to a message only if the original sender replies to the recipient's first response; and the recipient of a message can immediately initiate, via the system, a real-time communication in response to the message, or can schedule an appointment via the server/system.
Another aspect of the invention comprises an appointment scheduling function that includes the ability to specify which participants in a scheduled communications session are Provider Personas who can earn revenue, and which are Consumer Personas who will share fees. The appointment scheduling function can also include an appointment negotiation function that enables the amount of fees to be negotiated, if permitted by the Provider Persona on a given scheduled communications session. The appointment scheduling function can also include a facility to request an appointment at a rate lower than the Provider Persona's Maximum Rate, and wherein the appointment is only confirmed, via the system, if the Provider Persona and all participants agree to terms. The Provider Persona can determine in advance, via the system, to offer rates lower than his Maximum Rate to all, or to a subset, of users. In a related aspect, the invention enables the maintenance of a discount list comprising a non-public list of Personas that are allowed to communicate with a given Provider Persona at a discounted rate, or at a zero rate.
Another aspect of the invention enables a Provider to bill for offline work. In a related aspect, a given Provider's daily offline time billing, using an implementation of the invention, is limited to less than or equal to 24 hours/day.
Still another aspect of the invention enables Consumers to pay for services, content or time in, and to be paid in, a system-internal digital currency based on the value of Provider services, content or time established by system users through their activities on the system. The unit value of the system-internal digital currency can be tied to a system-calculated Maximum Rate of a hypothetical “standard person's” services, content or time.
In yet another aspect, the invention enables a Consumer Queue to be maintained for a given Provider, wherein a given Consumer can move up in a given Provider's Consumer Queue by paying in advance for a selected quantity of the Provider's services, content or time. In a related aspect, the Consumer can advance further in the queue by paying in advance for a greater quantity of the Provider's services, content or time.
In another aspect of the invention, Providers and Consumers can comprise software algorithm-based robots. In a related aspect, a method, computer code product or system-based implementation of the invention can be configured to not impose an upper limit on robot Provider time billing, wherein robot Provider time is billed at a fixed, system-specified rate.
In another aspect, a method, computer code product or system-based implementation of the invention limits a given user's total time billed using the invention, across all of a user's Personas, to less than or equal to 24 hours/day.
One aspect of the invention includes a method of enabling a provider to provide services or content to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the services or content provided, the method comprising: providing a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and providing a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the server to: match, via the server, a user who offers to provide services or content (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the services or content (“Consumer”); calculate, via the server, a market price for the offered services or content of the Provider, the calculation via the server being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's services or content; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase services or content of the Provider at the calculated market price; arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's service or content purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and deliver a communications session containing the service or content purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, via the server.
Another aspect of the invention includes a method of enabling a provider to sell his time to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the time provided, the method comprising: providing a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and providing a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the server to: match, in the server, a user who offers to provide his time (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the Provider's time (“Consumer”); calculate, in the server, a market price for the time of the Provider, the market price being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time at the calculated market price; arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and deliver a communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, via the server.
Another aspect of the invention provides a method of enabling a provider to sell his time or services to a consumer and be financially compensated for the value of the time or services provided, the method comprising: providing a server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network; and providing a storage element accessible to the server and storing instructions executable by the server, that when executed by the server enable the server to: match, in the server, a user who offers to provide his time or services (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the Provider's time or services (“Consumer”); calculate, in the server, a market price for the time or services of the Provider, the market price being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time or services; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time or services at the calculated market price; and arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time or services purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price.
One aspect of the invention includes a computer program product comprising computer-executable program instructions stored in a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable medium, the computer-readable medium being accessible by a server, the server comprising a computer processor and being accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network, the instructions being executable by the server, and which, when executed by the server, cause the server to: match, via the server, a user who offers to provide services or content (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the services or content (“Consumer”); calculate, via the server, a market price for the offered services or content of the Provider, the calculation via the server being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's services or content; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase services or content of the Provider at the calculated market price; arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's service or content purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and deliver a communications session containing the service or content purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, via the server.
Another aspect of the invention includes a computer program product comprising computer-executable program instructions stored in a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable medium, the computer-readable medium being accessible by a server, the server comprising a computer processor and being accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network, the instructions being executable by the server, and which, when executed by the server, cause the server to: match, in the server, a user who offers to provide his time (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the Provider's time (“Consumer”); calculate, in the server, a market price for the time of the Provider, the market price being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time at the calculated market price; arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and deliver a communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, via the server.
Another aspect of the invention provides a computer program product comprising computer-executable program instructions stored in a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable medium, the computer-readable medium being accessible by a server, the server comprising a computer processor and being accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the server via a network, the instructions being executable by the server, and which, when executed by the server, cause the server to: match, in the server, a user who offers to provide his time or services (“Provider”) with a user who wishes to buy the Provider's time or services (“Consumer”); calculate, in the server, a market price for the time or services of the Provider, the market price being based in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time or services; receive an indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time or services at the calculated market price; and arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time or services purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price.
As noted above, various aspects of the invention relate to a transactional platform utilizing AI, collectively referred to herein as the AIZA Platform. As noted above, AIZA Platform aspects of the invention can be practiced in conjunction with the ZM Transactional Platform aspects described herein. Alternatively, the AIZA Platform aspects of the invention can be practiced in conjunction with transactional platform configurations other than those of the ZM Transactional Platform configurations described herein.
Methods, systems, devices, and computer software/program code products in accordance with the invention are suitable for implementation or execution in, or in conjunction with, commercially available forms of computer network structures, including servers and other digital processing resources, and devices that communicate with, through or across such structures, such as commercially available forms of cellphones, smartphones, tablets and other commercially available telecommunications and computing devices.
In the aspects of the invention described herein and shown in the accompanying drawings, the methods described are executable by digital processors, which can include processing units such as those in known forms of computer network systems, servers, and devices that communicate with such systems and servers, such as cellphones, smartphones, tablets and other commercially available forms of telecommunications and computing devices.
In this regard, various aspects of the invention relate to digital server-based methods, systems, devices, and computer software/program code products for implementing an online marketplace, wherein a digital communications session is deliverable, via a digital server, from a provider to a consumer, for selling a quantity of the provider's time to the consumer and for financially compensating the provider for the value of the time sold.
In a related aspect of the invention, a system in accordance with the invention comprises: (A) a digital server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of digital communications with the server via a digital communications network, the server comprising at least a first digital processor; and (B) a digital storage element accessible to the digital server and storing digital computer-readable instructions executable by the server, which when executed by the server enable the system to: (1) match, in the server, a system user who offers to provide his time (“Provider”) with a system user who wishes to buy the Provider's time (“Consumer”); (2) calculate, in the server, a market price for the time of the Provider, the market price being based at least in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time; (3) receive a digital indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time at the calculated market price; (4) arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and (5) deliver, via the server, a digital communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, the digital communications session comprising a user-perceptible visual display of session-related information capable of being displayed to a user on a display element, and the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time.
In a related aspect, (a) the digital server and the digital storage element are collectively operable to deliver to the Consumer the communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time; and (b) the system enables a user to create and maintain at least one Persona for use on the system, wherein the Persona is a fictional identity associated, by the system, with a selected entity.
In another related aspect of the invention, the Persona is a fictional identity associated by the system with an Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In yet another aspect of the invention, the Persona is a fictional identity associated by the system with a human user.
In another aspect of the invention, the Persona is a fictional identity associated by the system with an entity that is either an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human user.
In a further aspect, the AI comprises an AI instantiation operable to communicate in natural language.
In another aspect, the AI is represented visually by an avatar.
In still another aspect of the invention, the AI comprises an instance of a general-purpose multi-modal system.
In a further aspect of the invention, the AI is customized for a selected domain of expertise.
In another practice of the invention, the AI is customized for a proprietary use.
In another aspect of the invention, the AI is personalized for a given user.
In a related aspect, the AI is customized or personalized by training.
In another related aspect of the invention, the AI is trained by an entity internal to the system.
In another practice of the invention, the AI is trained by an entity external to the system.
In another practice of the invention, the AI is run externally to the system and is connected to the system via an interface.
In another aspect, the AI is run within the system.
In one practice of the present invention, the AI utilizes a commercially available AI product.
In a related practice of the invention, the AI utilizes ChatGPT.
In another practice of the invention, the metric of demand is configured to enable the system to calculate an hourly rate for the time of a given AI-based Persona such that Consumers of services provided by the AI-based Persona pay for at least the cost of computational resources and other system-incurred fees associated with services provided by the given AI-based Persona.
In a related aspect, system-incurred fees comprise license fees.
The invention can also be practiced in a system in which: (A) user-to-user and Provider/Consumer communication across the system is executed through Personas; (B) a Persona can interact with at least one other Persona as a Provider of services or as a Consumer of services; and (C) the system enables a given user to elect to have at least one of the given user's Personas be any of: (1) anonymous, such that the Persona does not indicate the user's real-world identity; or (2) visible to (i) no other users of the system, (ii) a selected set of other users of the system, or (iii) all other users of the system.
In an exemplary practice of the invention: (A) communications carried on the system between users of the system are treated as chargeable communications that incur a monetary fee in the system; and (B) the system enables a given user to designate at least one selected Persona of the given user and at least one Persona of at least one other user, or of at least one group of other users, of the system, as Friend of the at least one selected Persona of the given user, and communications between designated, corresponding, Friends are not treated as chargeable communications, provided a selected condition is met.
In a related practice, the selected condition is that the at least one Persona of the at least one other user, or of the at least one group of other users, designated by the given user as Friend, in turn designates the at least one selected Persona of the given user as Friend, thereby signifying agreement to the Friend relationship.
In another aspect of the invention, the system enables a real-time private conversation, via the system, between Personas of individual users, or between Personas of groups of users.
In an exemplary practice of the invention, the system enables a Provider to create and maintain at least one Provider Persona for use on the system to interact with a Consumer.
In another practice of the invention, the system is adapted for deployment inside a business enterprise for establishing an enterprise-internal marketplace.
In another aspect, the delivering of a communications session is on any of a one-to-one or one-to-many basis.
In a further aspect of the invention, (a) the system is organized into functional digital processing layers comprising at least an Application Layer and a Communications Infrastructure Layer; (b) the Application Layer comprises social network, communication, Persona, scheduling, AI training and inference, and payment handling functions; (c) the Communications Infrastructure Layer comprises communications encryption and privacy settings functions, billing detail functions, personal contact lists, text-based conversations and history, audio and video chat functions, and document sharing functions; (d) system communications with and between users, via their Personas, is encrypted, and communications between users of the system utilizes a public/private key method, wherein the key material never leaves the user's device, and at least part of the key material is one-time-use key material; (e) user communications with system infrastructure is implemented through an SSL/TLS method; (f) intra-system network traffic is strongly point-to-point encrypted, and intra-system communications comprise any of: videoconferencing functions, text messaging, prompt functions, voice communications or voice messaging; (g) the system provides a server/cloud infrastructure for telecommunications, comprising a cloud-based network of infrastructure nodes that serve as a local point of connection for each user; and (h) the respective client application programs communicate with a cloud-based system application program.
In another aspect of the invention, the system enables a user to train at least one AI-based Persona associated by the system with the user.
In a further aspect, the system enables a user to customize or personalize at least one AI-based Persona associated by the system with the user.
In a related aspect, the training is implemented, via the system, using digital interaction between the user and the at least one AI-based Persona associated by the system with the user.
In another related aspect, the customizing or personalizing is implemented, via the system, using digital interaction between the user and the at least one AI-based Persona associated by the system with the user.
In yet another related aspect, the digital interaction comprises secure, private interaction, internal to the system, between the user and the at least one AI-based Persona associated by the system with the user.
In an exemplary practice of the invention, the digital interaction comprises prompt-engineering.
In another practice of the invention, the system enables a user to utilize an AI-based Persona operating as a personal assistant to the user.
In a related practice, the AI-based Persona, in the capacity of personal assistant to the user, provides knowledge to the user.
In another related practice of the invention, the AI-based Persona, in the capacity of personal assistant to the user, teaches the user in at least one selected field of study.
In yet another related practice, the AI-based Persona, in the capacity of personal assistant to the user, and on behalf of the user, interacts with any of the following: other Personas, websites, digital apps or online services.
In still another practice of the invention, the AI-based Persona, in the capacity of personal assistant to the user, and on behalf of the user, executes any of the following: sending and receiving email, sending and receiving text messages, making or receiving any of telephone or video calls.
Another aspect of the present invention relates to a method of implementing an online marketplace, wherein a digital communications session is deliverable, via a digital server, from a provider to a consumer, for selling a quantity of the provider's time to the consumer and for financially compensating the provider for the value of the time sold, wherein the method comprises: (A) providing a digital server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of digital communications with the server via a digital communications network, the server comprising at least a first digital processor; and (B) providing a digital storage element accessible to the digital server and storing digital computer-readable instructions executable by the server, which when executed by the server enable the server to: (1) match, in the server, a system user who offers to provide his time (“Provider”) with a system user who wishes to buy the Provider's time (“Consumer”); (2) calculate, in the server, a market price for the time of the Provider, the market price being based at least in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time; (3) receive a digital indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time at the calculated market price; (4) arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and (5) deliver, via the server, a digital communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, the digital communications session comprising a user-perceptible visual display of session-related information capable of being displayed to a user on a display element, and the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time, wherein: (a) the server, executing the instructions, is operable to deliver to the Consumer the communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time; and (b) the server, executing the instructions, is operable to create and maintain at least one Persona for use on the server, wherein the Persona is a fictional identity associated, by the server, with a selected entity.
Another aspect of the present invention relates to a computer program product comprising digital computer-executable program instructions stored in a non-transitory, tangible, computer-readable digital medium, the computer-readable digital medium being accessible by a digital server, the digital server comprising a computer processor and being accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of communicating with the digital server via a digital communications network, the instructions being executable by the digital server, and which, when executed by the digital server, cause the digital server to: (1) match, in the server, a system user who offers to provide his time (“Provider”) with a system user who wishes to buy the Provider's time (“Consumer”); (2) calculate, in the server, a market price for the time of the Provider, the market price being based at least in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's time; (3) receive a digital indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's time at the calculated market price; (4) arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and (5) deliver, via the server, a digital communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, the digital communications session comprising a user-perceptible visual display of session-related information capable of being displayed to a user on a display element, and the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time, wherein: (a) the server, executing the instructions, is operable to deliver to the Consumer the communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's time purchased by the Consumer, the price of the Provider's time being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's time; and (b) the server, executing the instructions, is operable to enable a user to create and maintain at least one Persona for use on the server, wherein the Persona is a fictional identity associated, by the server, with a selected entity.
Another aspect of the invention relates to a digital server-based system, method, or computer program product for implementing an online marketplace, wherein a digital communications session is deliverable, via a digital server, from a provider to a consumer, for selling a quantity of the provider's time, services or content (“TSC”) to the consumer and for financially compensating the provider for the value of the TSC sold. An exemplary system in accordance with this aspect of the invention comprises: (A) a digital server accessible to a plurality of users through respective client application programs executing on respective client devices capable of digital communications with the server via a digital communications network, the server comprising at least a first digital processor; and (B) a digital storage element accessible to the digital server and storing digital computer-readable instructions executable by the server, which when executed by the server enable the system to: (1) match, in the server, a system user who offers to provide his TSC (“Provider”) with a system user who wishes to buy the Provider's TSC (“Consumer”); (2) calculate, in the server, a market price for the TSC of the Provider, the market price being based at least in part on a metric of demand for the Provider's TSC; (3) receive a digital indication, at the server, of the Consumer's request to purchase the Provider's TSC at the calculated market price; (4) arrange for payment from the Consumer to the Provider, via the server, for the Provider's TSC purchased by the Consumer at the calculated market price; and (5) deliver, via the server, a digital communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's TSC purchased by the Consumer, from the Provider to the Consumer, the digital communications session comprising a user-perceptible visual display of session-related information capable of being displayed to a user on a display element, and the price of the Provider's TSC being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's TSC, wherein: (a) the digital server and the digital storage element are collectively operable to deliver to the Consumer the communications session having a duration corresponding to the amount of the Provider's TSC purchased by the Consumer, the price of the Provider's TSC being at least in part a function of the metric of demand for the Provider's TSC; and (b) the system enables a user to create and maintain at least one Persona for use on the system, wherein the Persona is a fictional identity associated, by the system, with a selected entity.
In accordance with exemplary practices of the invention it is noted that consumption of time, and payment for time, implies the consumption of content or services; that time can be used, in exemplary practices of the invention, as a measure for content and services; and that the price of time, in exemplary practices of the invention, can be used as a measure for the demand for content or services, including on the basis of their relevance, quality and value to one or more Consumers.
These and other aspects, examples, embodiments and practices of the invention, whether in the form of methods, devices, systems or computer software/program code products, will be discussed in greater detail below in the following Detailed Description of the Invention and in connection with the attached drawing figures.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that while the following detailed description provides sufficient detail to enable one skilled in the art to practice the present invention, the various examples, embodiments and practices of the present invention that are discussed and described below, in conjunction with the attached drawing figures, are provided by way of example, and not by way of limitation. Numerous variations, additions, and other modifications or different implementations of the present invention are possible, and are within the spirit and scope of the invention.
The Detailed Description of the Invention section is divided into the following subsections: Overview; Technical Elements; Derivative Products/Platforms; Glossary; Zeitprice—Additional Description; Digital Processing Environment in Which Invention Can Be Implemented; Flowcharts of Exemplary Techniques related to ZM-Platform; AIZA Platform: Transactional Platform Utilizing AI; Flowcharts of Exemplary Techniques related to AIZA Platform; and Block Diagrams of Exemplary Embodiment of AIZA Platform Aspects of the Invention; OVERVIEW
There is first provided an overview of a transactional platform according to the present invention, hereinafter referred to as the “Zeitmarket” or “ZM” platform.
The invention described herein provides a marketplace for real-time online services based on a fundamentally private and secure communications platform, which can be implemented as a secure social network or commercial network platform. In an exemplary practice of the invention, every communication, other than a communication among designated “Friend” entities, is treated as a business transaction, enabling users to realize (both intellectually and financially) the value of their time. In an exemplary practice of the invention, the fair market price of a provider's time is dynamically established, based on individual and system-wide commercial usage data, independent of the content of any given communication.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention described herein is a transactional platform (“ZM platform”) that facilitates the exchange of time for money. (The word “Zeit” is the German word for “time.”) In the present description, the word “time” generally refers to time spent by a person or persons, referred to herein as “providers,” for the benefit of another person or persons, referred to herein as “clients” or “consumers”. Providers and clients who are employing the ZM platform are collectively referred to herein as “users.”
It is noted that the words “user” and “member” herein may be used interchangeably when discussing the invention. But a person browsing public areas of the application may be a “visitor” and is not necessarily a “member,” although they are both “users.”
Exemplary embodiments and practices of the invention, described herein, have a number of features, and will:
A system according to the invention can be owned and operated as a completely new business with enormous global revenue potential. Revenue generation occurs in the form of a percentage of the transaction volume generated by providers in numerous verticals. The system can receive revenue for the use of the platform, enabling the providers to conduct their respective businesses. It can also be used to define and establish a digital currency based on fundamental resource, i.e., time.
The invention can be used to facilitate virtually any type of relationship involving time and money in both for-profit and non-profit contexts. Providers of time can include professionals as well as casual users of the platform. Clients can include large business enterprises as well as individuals. A given ZM user may be a provider in some transactions and a client in others.
As used herein, the term “time benefit” refers to any type of benefit accruing to a client 22 as a result of a provider's expenditure of time. The term “time benefit” includes, for example, a service provided by a provider directly to a client, as well as non-tangible benefits experienced by a client 22 when a provider 21 provides time to an individual or individuals other than the client, or to society as a whole.
With a cloud-based mobile or desktop app, users of a system according to the invention can conduct privacy-protected social and commercial, one-on-one and one-to-many, real-time and off-line conversations using speech, video, text, images and other media. In this way, the invention can improve existing client-provider relationships that require secure and private communications; and can facilitate new relationships by matching users who provide services with users who want to consume those services.
The invention can also provide an efficient way for people to generate income by sharing their knowledge, advice, expertise, experiences, creativity, performance, or empathy. As providers strive to increase the quality of their contributions, the “Zeitprice” algorithm described herein can be configured to raise such a provider's maximum price.
A system according to the invention can be implemented to generates revenues from the outset of operation, by charging a percentage on all service fees, in reasonable proportion to operating expenses and in a transparent manner. The system according to the invention, in turn, can provide a digital infrastructure for business transactions among its members and keeps their communications securely encrypted and protected from eavesdropping and data analysis.
The ZM platform according to the invention can include the following aspects:
Privacy: The system can be implemented with secure communication and transparent privacy policies.
Personas and Anonymity: In accordance with one practice of the invention, users have the option to use their real world identity or one of several anonymous, completely protected fictional identities, each called a persona, chosen by the user to be visible only to a specified set of other personas or to the general public. The consumers of services on a system in accord with the invention may remain anonymous to the providers. Providers may choose to remain anonymous to their clients. A system user database, in accordance with the invention, can serve as the link between the social platform's user identity and the billing facility.
Communication Charges: In accordance with one practice of the invention, any communication other than a conversation with designated Friends can be treated as a business transaction on the system between a provider and a client, and monetarily charged for, including text messages and email sent by one persona to another, subject to the detection of certain patterns of behavior as verifiable signs of interest displayed by the recipient.
“Zeitprice”: One embodiment of the invention provides a performance-based automated mechanism for price-finding, in which the server publishes each provider's “Zeitprice”, a market price that the server, configured in accordance with a practice of the invention, determines algorithmically based on the provider's “Success”, a function measuring how well a provider fills more time slots with higher-paying customers. Each seller may choose either to charge the Zeitprice to all buyers or to negotiate with each buyer within the price range below and up to the Zeitprice. The Zeitprice of each provider is determined by a server-based module, which can be implemented using known computer software and hardware techniques and products, referred to herein as the Universal Zeitmachine (UZM). In one practice of the invention, the UZM implements the Zeitprice determination based on data provided by each member's individual Zeitmachine.
Revenue Sources: In one practice of the invention, the transactional platform of the invention, or the platform or system provider, can earn revenue by taking a percentage of the fees that individual service or content providers charge consumers for time spent, and by taking a percentage of fees consumers charge advertisers for time spent engaging with ads. In addition, the system or platform provider can charge some or all users a one-time, monthly or annual subscription fee, including in the form of an up-front payment for services or impose time limitations on the use of some of the free platform services such as video communication among Friends to reduce the cost of operation if needed. However, such charges and limitations would potentially add friction to the decision to register as a user and to the day-to-day use of the platform.
Enterprise-Directed Embodiment: One embodiment of the invention can be adapted for secure internal and external communication and the establishment of a company-internal market for time, an important and limited resource in most enterprises; and the system-provider's revenues can include per-seat enterprise license and maintenance fees.
Approximately two billion people communicate on social networks today. These networks encourage users to share their time, experience and knowledge, and in return, the networks mine personal and sometimes sensitive information about their users' lives, for free. Social networks offer a platform for people to communicate, initiate and maintain social relations and interactions free of charge; but their benefits come at the price of giving away personal information for free; and many users increasingly feel uncomfortable doing so. An expanding base of users would prefer to pay for verifiable security and guaranteed privacy.
Additionally, most users are also providers or potential providers. They have the knowledge and creativity to provide valuable services and content, or could provide such services and content if they were compensated for it. Unfortunately, they currently lack a way to establish relationships with the potential consumers of their services that allows them to be adequately compensated.
In contrast, the invention, in one aspect, provides a platform for measured sharing of valuable services and content in a private, secure manner, and being compensated for their value. Also in accord with the invention, shared services or content become part of a global marketplace in which demand for services and content drives the price of a provider's time higher. It can be implemented in a manner that is secure, private and non-exploitable, and as its perceived value goes up, so does provider compensation.
Platform Enables Monetizing Time: People today conduct business and share information privately through interactions with networked devices. While traditional communication channels like telephone, television and print have well-established means of exchanging rendered services for money (e.g., pay-per-view or subscription models), the Internet has seen only partial attempts at creating a means for everyone to monetize their time online.
In contrast, exemplary embodiments of the invention establish a platform for buying and selling time online by deploying an online marketplace with the following central elements:
Foster Provider/Client Relationships: A transactional platform in accordance with the invention can improve existing client-provider relationships that require secure and private communications. For example, a lawyer could invite clients to engage in privileged online audio/video conversations with confidence that the content of such conversations could not be intercepted as a phone call could, nor that it is stored and analyzed by an intermediary. The invention can also facilitate new client-provider relationships by matching those who provide services with those who want to consume such services online.
Protection of Privacy: The methods, systems and computer program products of the invention can be implemented with strong end-to-end encryption.
As described herein, exemplary embodiments of the invention provide a commercial and/or social transactional platform where users can turn their time into money while protecting consumer privacy. In exemplary embodiments, a platform according to the invention can enable the following: secure internet transmission of audio, video, messages, screens and documents; and membership, identity and relationship management that protects consumer privacy.
In one embodiment, the invention enables comprehensive and strong end-to-end encryption to protect the privacy of its users and the security of their communications. In addition, in one embodiment, a platform or system member or user may define one or more real or fictional identities called personas. In one embodiment of the invention, individuals who see the persona online within the system of the invention will not see the persona owner's true identity unless that owner chooses to reveal it.
The ZM platform enables the provision and consumption of any and all imaginable services and content that can be provided online using many supported media formats, either for free or for a fee. Any ZM platform member can convert time to money by:
A fee based on the Zeitprice of each user's current persona is levied on each communication with the user by another user's persona and earned by the initial recipient of the communication if there is a verifiable sign of the sender's interest in the reply of the initial recipient such as a reply to the reply, an agreement to engage in a paid conversation, or the designation of the sender as a Friend on the ZM platform. As noted in 3(b) above, a celebrity may specify a charity approved by the entity that is operating or administrating the ZM platform or system, to which initial contact and/or conversation fees will go.
The ZM platform enforces an upper limit on the hourly rate that a persona may charge for his or her time. This limit is called the Zeitprice. The Zeitprice scale is chunked into thirteen tiers of exponentially increasing Zeitprices, called Levels. Every persona at a given Level has the same Zeitprice.
Any provider can either charge an initial fee that is the standard base level within the ZM platform for users or tentatively charge a higher fee during a period of probation. A certified professional provider can either charge an initial fee that is the standard base level within the ZM platform for certified professional providers or present, digitally, electronically, or in manual form, to the ZM server or platform or its administrator, their credentials and evidence that a higher fee that they already charge meets fair market standards. The initial fee determines the initial Level.
The sum of the time all personas of a particular user can charge for is capped at a maximum of less than or equal to 24 hours/day.
Once a provider of time has worked a sufficient, selected length of time in connection with ZM platform, an algorithm that runs periodically adjusts their Level up or down based on their Success, a function measuring how well and how fast a provider fills more time slots with higher-paying customers.
The so-called Price Range of a given Level is bounded by the Zeitprice of that Level and the Zeitprice of the Level below ($0 below Level 0). Any new provider can choose his or her initial Level and an initial published price within the corresponding Price Range, provided, however, that such Level, the associated Zeitprice and the initial published price will all be clearly marked as tentative. After one or more rounds of observation and adjustment by the Universal Zeitmachine, the provider's Zeitprice will be declared established at a Level where his or her observed Success is not below a required floor. Such Level may turn out to be the lowest possible Level. The established Zeitprice will be published and can only be changed subsequently by the Universal Zeitmachine.
The population of personas at each Level is expected to fit a pyramidal distribution. The higher the Level: the smaller the population at that Level; the more plentiful the privileges; and the higher the Zeitprice.
A Provider Finder that is quick for buyers and fair to sellers. To make category browsing less intimidating to consumers, algorithms continuously optimize both the category tree and the order of search results that each searcher sees.
A Conversation Scheduler that works with the calendar of choice. One embodiment of the invention indicates conversation conflicts it finds in the user's preferred calendar and enters conversation appointments and reminders in that calendar for the user (API-permitting).
Personas and Privacy: A system according to the invention can be implemented with secure communication; and so that a consumer's privacy is protected unless he or she has waived it. Thus, in a practice of the invention, the ZM platform has been configured to include the following aspects:
A real or fictional identity is represented by a persona that the member has created.
No persona is listed in any directory unless its owner chooses to make it visible either to everyone or to specifically designated members, including members qualified due to the non-refundable pre-payment of an amount matching the Zeitprice of the persona at issue.
Each member has the option in each invitation or conversation to choose any persona they own to represent them.
A member who can see another member's pseudonymous identity in a conversation, contact list, invitation, etc., will see that it is fictional but will not see the owner's true identity. Only the owner can enable another member's ability to see their true identity.
Certified professional providers selling services may not do so anonymously. Uncertified providers and normal members providing services may do so anonymously.
Normally, when a provider uses multiple personas, their purpose is to provide multiple services. Consequently, each provider's persona (not each member) is considered a unique provider.
Zeitprice: The upper limit price that each provider can charge consumers is called their Zeitprice. The provider may choose to charge the full Zeitprice to every consumer, to charge a discounted price to every consumer, or to negotiate a discount with each consumer individually.
The ZM platform publishes each provider's current Zeitprice and clearly indicates whether it is tentative or established. A provider who provides more than one service should use a different persona, a different Zeitprice, and a different discounted price for each service.
The Zeitprice algorithm uses a performance-based formula based on measured Success, not on biased and possibly manipulated public feedback. It does not use privacy-violating analysis of the content of communications and of the services provided.
Applications: Examples of ZM platform-based services include the following:
Any group of members who have specified each other as Friends can communicate securely and (optionally) anonymously via text, images, documents, voice and live video. the ZM platform permits a large but possibly limited number of hours per month of free video communication among Friends. All other communication services for communicating among Friends are offered without restrictions limiting their use.
Any member can provide fee-based services to one or more simultaneous clients via Real-Time Private Conversation. The ZM platform helps potential clients find service providers, providing the ability to read their blogs and view other communications media before buying their services using actual currency in exchange for their time, knowledge, or services.
The ZM platform algorithmically establishes the Zeitprice of each provider, which is the maximum price per time unit that he or she can charge for real-time communication with clients, and for services performed offline with the consent of the consumer if the provider is utilizing the ZM platform time measurement features. Written communication is assumed to consume a fraction of that time unit and hence will cost only a prorated fraction of the Zeitprice. If the receiver is on the same Level as the sender, their expenses for exchanging messages balance, and both effectively pay only the applicable commission to the ZM platform.
The ZM platform collects fees from clients and pays the provider his or her fees, reduced by the applicable commission rates.
Examples of such commerce in time include:
Message-Based Advertising: In one practice of the invention, a transactional platform according to the invention does not directly sell or display third party advertisements, and instead all visible participants who have opted in to this unique program can be targeted by message-based advertising (text, audio or video), provided the advertiser is willing to pay the fees associated with the communication, the price of which is determined by the Zeitprice of each individual receiver. In addition, verified participants may appear—at their sole discretion—using their true respective identities.
The receiver of an advertising message earns the fee that the advertiser pays the ZM platform, reduced by the commission charged by the ZM platform, but only if the receiver clicks on a link in the message in a verifiable way, or sends the advertiser a reply to which the advertiser replies. If the receiver is in the same Level as the advertiser, their expenses for exchanging messages balance and both effectively pay only the applicable commission to the ZM platform. If the receiver is in a higher Level than the sender, there is a net gain for the receiver. Companies advertising on the ZM platform will typically waive the cost of text-message-based communications to them in response to their advertising messages.
“Adversation” Sessions: One practice of the invention provides an alternative to text-message-based advertising, via a communications session referred to herein as an “adversation” session. An adversation session can be a video conversation between an advertiser and a consumer in which the advertiser pays the consumer to offer and discuss her reactions to a campaign, a product, a TV ad, a search results ad, etc. Adversations provide a new modality for advertisers to conduct market research on the Internet.
Social Platform: The ZM platform provides a platform and mechanisms for creating and maintaining private and public, personal and professional social networks. ZM platform members establish and maintain personal contacts with other participating members in either a personal function or to provide or obtain professional services, depending on mutual interests and/or corresponding service offerings, particularly with members outside of the user's personal circles.
Charitable Donations: Providers and other sellers of time may donate their proceeds to an approved and registered charitable institution. The ZM platform will donate its share of the proceeds, i.e., the commission to the same institution. In addition, the ZM platform can be configured to identify international charities that have been initiated by a VIP (Entertainment, Fashion, Business, Politics, Science, etc. of national as well international recognition) or which have a strong involvement by a VIP. It will engage in an educational campaign educating those non-profits on how to register with us and involve their community and donors in the game, as well as how to activate their VIP patrons and the admirers of those VIPs, how to create awareness for their ZM platform event on- and offline, and how to get the message out to the people who are potentially willing to spend the required sum on a conversation, lecture, or concert. The ZM platform will also track scheduled charitable VIP communications with PR and will provide a community billboard to help promoting these. The VIPs donate one or several conversations, lectures, or concerts in the ZM platform benefiting their preferred charity.
Other organizations can apply for registration to also be a recipient for donations. To benefit most, they should engage in the training to become an active “VIP conversation and event organizer”.
It is key to educate charitable organizations about the process and empower them to promote their ZM platform event through social and general media on their own.
The following elements will next be discussed: Secure user database and directory; Communication apps with strong end-to-end encryption (platform dependent) for text messaging and high-quality video (later to be augmented by a premium mode for virtual 3D telepresence); Encryption/privacy infrastructure (best-in-class, utilizing public/private key scheme, key vaults, and the like); Server (cloud) infrastructure for establishing and optimizing connections; Social platform interfaces (depending on the platform: Facebook-plugin, iPhone/Android-App, Twitter-API); and Billing interfaces.
In the illustrated practice of the invention, the same components are expressed at each layer. The platform components communicate with each other, using suitably secure protocols, including Secured and Certified Connection (SCC) 31, Encrypted SCC 32, and User-to-User (U2U) Encrypted SCC.
In an exemplary embodiment, the ZM platform utilizes “native” smartphone or other computing applications to ensure high performance and best possible utilization of specific device features. A balance can be struck, using known software and programming techniques for mobile devices, so that the user experience is consistent with other applications on that platform as well as that of the ZM platform app itself on other platforms.
Support is provided for emerging platforms and peripherals, such as wearable computing, an emerging area with significant relevance to the ZM platform. Google Glass and similar wearable video recording devices are a natural fit for video conferencing and potentially other services that would benefit from telepresence.
Users can access ZM platform services through apps that run ZM platform client software. ZM platform client software will run on: Phones (iOS, Android, Windows); Tablets (iOS, Android, Windows); and PCs (Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, Linux).
In an exemplary embodiment, the ZM platform utilizes “native” smartphone or other computing applications to ensure high performance and best possible utilization of specific device features. A balance can be struck, using known software and programming techniques for mobile devices, so that the user experience is consistent with other applications on that platform as well as that of the ZM platform app itself on other platforms.
Support is provided for emerging platforms and peripherals, such as wearable computing, an emerging area with significant relevance to the ZM platform. Google Glass and similar wearable video recording devices are a natural fit for video conferencing and potentially other services that would benefit from telepresence.
User Experience Goals: The contents and layouts of most screens in a ZM platform app depend on the host OS, the means of pointing and the size of the device's display. Devices with smaller displays show fewer simultaneous UI elements.
Home Screen: The Home Screen can be implemented to be sparse, except for frequently-used graphical user interface elements that a user has chosen to appear upon login. There are never more UI elements visible on the screen than absolutely needed at any time. The home screen components of a desktop ZM platform client may include the following (mobile clients often display less):
A person who wants to use any feature of the ZM platform other than read-only searches of the persona/provider directory must create an account and specify at least one payment method (credit card, Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.) for identity verification purposes.
In this document, a user without an account is called a visitor. A user who has registered an account is called a member. A member who pays a recurring subscription fee (which may be zero) is called a subscriber. Subject to the introduction of subscription fees, a member who is not a subscriber is either a “trier” (if participating in a full-function time-bounded free trial) or a visitor.
What the ZM platform knows about each member's true identity is (a) the real name on the payment account that the member used most recently to transact financially with the ZM platform and (b) other identifying information that the member has voluntarily provided to the ZM platform. The “other identifying information” in a user's identity may include such attributes as gender, age, relationship status, geographic location, occupation, hobbies, professional licenses, education, work history, social network handles, etc. With such optionally provided information, the ZM platform can do a better job of matching providers and consumers, certifying the initial Zeitprice, recognizing Friends eligible for free videoconferences, etc.
Each item of identifying information in the member database is marked by the ZM platform as either verified or unverified.
Subject to exceptions required by law or explicit and active consent by the member, the ZM platform never discloses member information (verified or not) to advertisers or other entities inside or outside the ZM platform. The ZM platform collects such information to enable users to log in, pay, be paid, receive reminders, see relevant search results, display bona fide credentials to clients, and other actions that members joined the ZM platform to perform.
Account Creation: In one embodiment, to register as a member, a visitor must provide:
A unique user name for use by the member and the ZM platform use as account identification.
A user-chosen password of sufficient strength.
One or more pieces of contact info, e.g., email address, text-capable phone number, social network ID, Skype handle, etc.
One or more financial account ID's (PayPal, bank account, debit card, credit card, Apple Pay, etc.) and the accountholder name on each.
The company will debit a designated account when the member owes the ZM platform money and will credit a designated capable account when the ZM platform owes the member money.
Details such as which credits/debits are made on a monthly or daily schedule and which are made at the moment that fees are incurred will be decided at a later time.
Terms of Use: In a typical setting, the ZM Terms of Use (TOU) would be displayed to the user during registration. The user can access the latest version any time through the help and support links. The contents of this document include, but are not limited to, the following:
Individuals are limited to a single ZM platform account.
Business entities are considered separate from individuals so that a person can have a separate account for a business, provided the account is in the name of the business, not the individual. A business account is a meta-account, bundling the services of staff members in the form of their staff member business persona accounts, each under the umbrella of the employing business.
Account Settings: The ZM platform client provides a means for users to specify preferences related to their account, including the following:
Users also have access to usage information related to their account, including:
The ZM platform comprises a suite of cloud-based services. The services support the creation and management of secure identity, communication, scheduling and pricing.
Personas: Users of ZM platform interact with each other exclusively via personas. A persona represents a real user or a fictitious character. The ZM platform strives to conceal the relationship of fictitious personas to members. Each member can choose to expose their true identity through a persona or remain anonymous. At least one persona is required to represent a ZM platform user, although they have the option to create any number of additional personas.
A persona name has two parts: <short name><disambiguating characters>. The full name of a persona P1 must be unique across the service. The short name alone need not be unique across the service or among the member's personas. But for esthetic reasons, the short name can be displayed alone to another persona P2 whenever there is no other persona with that short name connected to P2 (and thus no ambiguity). Disambiguating characters can be suggested by the ZM platform. The short name can be the persona owner's real legal name (the name on a verified financial account or government-issued ID) or a pseudonym of their choosing. In important contexts such as search results and invitations, every persona name is badged as:
Providers: A provider is a persona that offers a service to other personas. A provider can both sell their own time and buy other people's time in private conversations. Any user can be a provider with any of their personas.
Like any persona, a provider can choose to remain anonymous. We encourage and expect the vast majority of professional providers to identify themselves in a verifiable way to potential customers.
A certified professional provider is a persona that offers a service to other personas under his or her real name and the professional qualification of such provider has been certified by the ZM platform.
Profiles: Each persona has a profile with standard fields and optional elements, such as a description, a picture and a blog. The blog allows the persona's owner to discuss topics of interest as well as describe any services that the persona offers as a provider.
Identity Disclosure: A persona may reveal a user's true identity or provide the user with anonymity. The choice is up to the user and is revealed to viewers of the persona. A persona representing a real user will be labeled as such when viewing the persona's profile. A graphical “badge” identifies verified properties of a persona.
The verification process can produce different levels of verification—i.e., verification “strength”. One item of verification, such as a credit card, produces one verification “bar”. Two items produce two bars, and so on.
Possible verification points include: Credit Card; Facebook; LinkedIn; Other social networks or services approved by the ZM platform; and Referral by other trusted and identified members of the ZM platform. Additionally, the ZM platform will provide a higher level of certification for celebrities and VIPs, which may involve ZM platform staff performing actual research. This level of certification can occur at the sole discretion of the administrators of the ZM platform.
Service Categories: A user can create personas to provide services in different categories (e.g., music instruction and automotive repair).
A user cannot seek clients for a provider they own until that provider's persona has been tied to a specific profession by the selection of professional category keywords (e.g., “Legal, Health, Education, Entertainment”). A small number of category keywords (limited to around 20 for each persona) can be chosen from a much larger set of suggested choices and/or categories that the user invents.
A user who wants to deliver content in multiple related categories can construct a constellation of personas linked through blog comments. This allows content to be separated by topic (and individually ranked), but still linked for cross-marketing purposes.
Provider Verification: In addition to the usual identifying information, a provider can present to the ZM platform administrators, his or her professional licenses and other credentials. Providers who provide services that do not require credentials can attest to their experience and provide the ZM platform with supporting evidence. If satisfied, the ZM platform will place an unforgeable badge in the provider's profile with an appropriate label like “Credentials Verified” or “Experience Verified” in distinctive type. The ZM platform can revoke the badge if the supplied information expires or is deemed to be fraudulent.
When the ZM platform has verified the provider's qualifications, it agrees to set the provider's initial Zeitprice to their standard off-line hourly fee, or to the Zeitprice of the third Level if these fees are not known or lower than the Zeitprice on the third Level.
Condition-Based Availability: A subscriber can adjust a setting to indicate whether an owned persona is willing to enter into a conversation when that subscriber is not already scheduled on the ZM platform and other conditions are met.
Availability conditions in the settings of a subscriber's persona include: available anytime; available if using this device; available now; and unavailable.
Availability conditions in a future time slot of the subscriber's calendar include: available; available if using <device name>device; and unavailable.
The ZM platform Directory is a user view of the persona database. A search function allows users to search for user-owned personas and providers based on search term(s) that they specify. Advanced options allow users to further refine their search; for example, a search option allows users to filter results to display only personas with an “available now” call status.
Server-based data analysis: In addition to searching, users (represented by one of their particular personas) can browse a centralized directory of public personas organized by category. When privacy settings allow it, real-time information about each persona is displayed to indicate their call status (e.g., online and accepting calls). The communication cost for the persona is also displayed.
Options to browse the ZM platform persona directory with sorting and filtering (by topic, Level, etc.) help the user to discover other users and their services within the ZM platform network. Additionally, users are able to access existing contact/Friend lists from email and other social networks and invite those Friends to join the ZM platform.
For part-time service providers (and/or those with irregular schedules), the persona directory browser can match them with consumers looking for their service. The search function of the persona browser can be used to search for particular categories of service at particular times. For example, students in need of help can be instantly connected with a tutor on demand. This allows qualified individuals with some free time (but possibly irregular schedules) to become tutors by connecting with in-need students in real-time.
Entries in the database ensure that a persona is only visible to certain specified personas when searching or browsing the ZM platform directory. The persona can specify visibility to the general public, all Friends, every persona whose Level is the same or higher than theirs, an explicit list of personas or even a single anonymous persona.
Saved Contacts List: Through directory searching, directory browsing, a ZM platform invitation, or a received communication using social media or email, a member may discover a persona of interest. The member may add such a persona to a list of saved contacts.
There is a separate such list for each of the member's personas.
Whenever a member communicates with a persona, that persona is automatically added to a visible list of recently contacted personas. There is a separate such list for each of the member's personas.
Calendar: The primary activity of a ZM platform user is to initiate, schedule and engage in audio/video communications between one of his or her personas and personas of one or more other users. In many cases, this requires arranging a meeting time in advance. The ZM platform app facilitates this by providing its own secure calendar, stored on the server. The calendar system provides tools to ensure that personas aren't double-booked, reconciling all the various appointments within all of a user's personas
The calendar provides a place for users to designate time within their schedule that is available for the ZM platform. For some providers, a public reservation system (like those often used by hotel websites) may be appropriate, where blocks of available time are publicly visible to users. Other providers may wish for their schedule to remain private and do not want to publish it, in which case prospective clients will request an appointment time. Publicizing available time allows potential customers to search for providers available at a particular time slot.
Calendar Settings: When persona owners block out available time, they are also able to specify a priority for the time slots to indicate which times they would prefer to be booked first. This priority is expressed by at least three options: Best (the persona would prefer that these slots are booked first); Good (the persona is basically neutral with respect to these slots); Acceptable (the persona is available for these slots, but would prefer other slots to be chosen first); and Unavailable (used to explicitly exclude time blocks from the ZM platform).
Timeline: The calendar also functions as a timeline in the sense that it provides methods exclusively and privately to a persona's owner to access that persona's activities in the ZM platform, including text messages and video/audio conversations, (but not any access to text/video/audio content—exclusively metadata), providing a unified log of communication within the ZM platform network. The timeline can be traversed both in the future and the past to enable review of everything the user has done per persona and has scheduled to do in the future.
Universal Zeitmachine (UZM) and Zeitprice:
The Zeitprice is determined by a server based module called the Universal Zeitmachine. It implements the Zeitprice determination based on data provided by each member's individual Zeitmachine, as described in greater detail elsewhere herein.
Security (ZMSec):
In an exemplary embodiment, the ZM platform is configured to provide high security for the transmission of personal data, including protection from digital eavesdropping and data analysis. In particular, in such an embodiment, all network communication is encrypted. Communication with the ZM platform infrastructure is implemented through SSL/TLS with a certificate hierarchy in place (not necessarily rooted at a public certificate provider).
Communication with other users is implemented with a public/private key scheme, where the keying-material never leaves the user's device. A key vault for recovering key material is provided.
The user has complete control over the personal information displayed by their persona(s). The user can choose a fictional name for each persona or choose to use their real name. No information will be taken from the user's account settings and exposed by the persona without the user's explicit consent. In general, the ZM platform treats all of a user's information as private by default.
There are different aspects of persona privacy, as follows:
An unlisted persona is only visible to other personas that have been specifically designated by the unlisted persona owner. It is never possible for a third party to expose an unlisted persona to another user in the ZM platform without the owner's consent.
The owner of a persona (listed or unlisted) can choose to permit or block visibility to other personas who they specifically designate or to all personas in a specified range of Zeitprice Levels below and up to the Zeitprice Level of his or her respective persona. A blocking persona appears to be both unlisted and cloaked to the blocked persona.
Visibility of a persona in a higher Level can be enabled for a lower rank persona wishing to see the higher-Level persona by obtaining enough non-refundable credit in advance to purchase at least one hour of services or video communication with the higher-Level persona.
The ZM platform UI facilitates references to personas by providing a UI widget, such as a capsule, that displays the persona name and links to the persona profile. These references can be embedded in messages, persona blogs, etc., but references to unlisted personas are only visible to those personas designated by the unlisted persona owner. To a non-privileged persona, the capsule of an unlisted persona is blank (or labeled “unlisted” or equivalent).
The ZM platform communications infrastructure integrates the following features in the best possible manner for each hardware platform, including: communication encryption/privacy settings; billing details; personal contact list; text-based conversation and its history; high-quality audio and video chat and broadcast; and document sharing.
While the primary focus of the ZM platform is interactive video chat, there are additional tools and communication media that complement it, including: shared white board; auxiliary interactive graphics such as charts, graphs, including interactive 3D graphics; the ability to share the user's screen, or window of another application; and real-time text-based chat.
Check-in and check-out time-stamp mechanisms to measure and quantify off-line activities performed as a service by a provider.
For example, a user who has created a persona who offers a consulting service might conduct a video training session in which they utilize a white board to illustrate their points and an interactive/animated 3D model to display complex spatial relationships.
Communication Quality: The ZM platform of the invention described herein requires that the user has access to a network connection of suitable quality to support ZM platform services, although this is not always under the control of the user. In some cases, the quality of a connection may change over time (e.g., a temporary degradation due to high network traffic). A connection that appears to be working may at some point during the conversation degrade to the point where it can no longer support audio or video for a period of time.
The ZM platform client informs the user of the status of the network when relevant. For example, if it is unable to maintain the current services it is providing to the user.
The ZM platform client will endeavor never to drop a connection. The ZM platform can be configured to default to a condition in which, unless a communication partner explicitly ends a call, the call should remain logically connected. If the network connection is lost, the ZM platform will attempt to reconnect the user or restart the call when the network connection is restored. If the network connection is lost for a certain period of time, the user will be prompted before an active audio/video stream is reopened.
When a network connection is lost, the ZM platform client that was dropped will inform the user (via audio in the case of a voice-only call). Other participants on the call will also be informed that a member was lost. In the case of a voice-only call this is critical because there is no other way for the user to know they were dropped and may continue speaking as if they are still addressing other members in the call.
Best video/sound quality is achieved with respect to the available network infrastructure. Quality feedback is used to optimize the data rate. Images of participants who are currently speaking are updated at higher frame rates than images of listeners.
Video/sound is provided in any imaginable networking infrastructure (NAT, proxy, 3G/4G, WiFi).
The actual video/sound transmission is to be hidden as well as possible from network providers to allow for communication in restricted environments (VPN).
Network communication inside the VPN follows well-proven industry standards (e.g., SIP).
Privacy Aspects: In an exemplary practice of the invention, all network traffic is strongly point-to-point encrypted. Care is taken that no private information (i.e., call logs or similar) is stored for longer than absolutely necessary to provide an adequate amount of time for customers to review their invoices, for the company to comply with applicable law, and for other unavoidable reasons that may arise.
In an exemplary embodiment, the content of a real-time communication between users stored in not stored by the ZM platform.
Text messages are stored in a format encrypted with keys held only by the sender and recipient. Text messages are stored for the minimum amount of time possible, until retrieved or deleted by the client.
Video Conference: At least one view displays incoming video, and an optional smaller view shows the outgoing video. In the case of multi-user (>2 users) conferences, lectures, or performances such as concerts, additional views are provided for each of the participants. The user has the ability to customize the video view layout to suit their needs/preferences, dependent on the capabilities and form factor of the device. Automatic face-tracking and attendee cropping maximizes the number of tiled user windows for the scale of the device used.
Text Message: The user is able to read and compose text-based messages. Views and controls are available to: browse incoming messages, compose responses as well as new messages, delete messages. attach an image or PDF file to a text message, and search through messages.
Standard messaging commands (Read, Reply, Forward, Delete, Compose, Edit, Attach, Send, and the like, although not necessarily with those names) can be provided to allow users to manage their text messages. The text message view displays messages sent to or from the user's currently-selected persona, and the label for that persona is displayed in the identity bar. The user can browse a list of message threads and expand each one to reveal the message thread contents in chronological order. The Calendar/Event timeline provides a global view of all messages in chronological order.
Server/Cloud Infrastructure for Telecommunication: Video chat communications are often implemented on the Internet as peer-to-peer communication, but this introduces some disadvantages:
Privacy is reduced as the communication partner can be derived on network-provider level by evaluating IP traffic.
NAT and proxy transversal is a complex real-world problem.
Latency can be better optimized between local infrastructure nodes than between any two end users.
Thus, the ZM platform is based on a cloud-based network of infrastructure nodes that serve as a local point of connection and bundle all traffic to the corresponding node local to the communication partner, where “local” means as local as the nearest cloud infrastructure is to the respective user.
Purpose: A principle of the ZM platform is that people's time has value for which they should be compensated when spent on someone else's behalf. To accomplish this, the ZM platform provides a marketplace where an individual's time can be bought and sold. The ZM platform continuously or periodically calculates the market price for the time of each persona called the Zeitprice. The Zeitprice is the maximum chargeable price per time unit for a particular persona.
One of the goals of the Zeitprice is to solve the trust issue of “How do consumers trust providers?” Specifically, the goal is to reduce the risk people perceive in making a purchasing decision.
As any change of the Zeitprice is based on the behavior of the users of the ZM platform, the way it changes should be extensible and simple.
The Universal Zeitmachine algorithm collects sales data (time slots offered, time slots purchased, prices paid) from the individual Zeitmachines and uses them and other factors (e.g., vacations) to calculate Success, a metric value that rises when a provider fills more time slots with higher-paying customers. Given the provider's current Level and their recent Success, the algorithm decides whether to raise or lower the provider's Level or leave it alone. On each Level, there is a Zeitprice.
A new underpaid provider may ascend a Level every week and then settle into a Level for many weeks, months or years before rising further or slipping down the scale. The difficulty of earning a higher Level may be dialed up or down by management to maintain a target percentage distribution that works best for consumers, providers and the ZM platform.
Zeitprice Impacts: The ZM platform, in an exemplary embodiment, treats the time of its users as valuable and potentially entitled to compensation, regardless of whether the user intends to offer a specific service on the ZM platform. All types of communication within the ZM platform, whether real-time audio/video/text communication or offline messaging, or offline work utilizing the ZM platform's time-stamp mechanisms, incur a communication fee based on the target persona's Zeitprice. The recipient of the communication usually receives this fee (minus the applicable commission retained by the ZM platform) to compensate him or her for his or her time.
The Zeitprice of the provider(s) in a real-time communication session defines the maximum price of an hour-long session. The price to send a text message compensates the persona for the typical time it takes for someone to read and respond to a message. That price is tied to a persona's Level and may be weighted based on the size of the message. While composing a message, the ZM platform client app displays real-time feedback to the user indicating the communication cost.
For example, a service-providing persona can send a message to a listed persona promoting their services, but must pay the associated communication fee. At the same time, the ZM platform encourages meaningful responses to messages. The receiver of a message only receives revenue for reading and responding to a message if the original sender eventually replies to the receiver's first response.
The instigator of communication (e.g., the sender of a text message) usually pays the fee and the targeted receiver of the communication has the opportunity to earn revenue. A persona can start a real-time communication immediately (based on availability) or schedule an appointment. The ZM platform client application provides a process to schedule an appointment, which includes the ability to specify which participants are service providers (and potentially earn revenue) and which are consumers (and share the fee). The appointment negotiation process also allows the amount of the fee to be negotiated (if allowed by providers).
The Zeitprice defines the maximum fee per time unit paid by an individual consumer of services or content, but personas can offer a lower communication or content delivery rate if so desired. As noted above and if allowed by a provider, the appointment request form provides a means to request an appointment at a rate lower than the Zeitprice. The appointment is only confirmed if the provider and all participants agree to the terms. Additionally, the persona's owner can decide in advance to offer rates lower than her Zeitprice to all or a subset of ZM platform users, for example to an audience of viewers of a lecture, performance, or concert.
When it differs from the Zeitprice and is offered to all users equally, the price set by the persona owner is displayed as part of the persona's profile.
There exists a 100% discount list that is a non-public list of personas that are allowed to communicate without additional charge (beyond the payment of a possible ZM platform base membership fee). Friends are automatically added to the list.
Initial Level and Zeitprice: A certified professional provider may set her initial Level after presenting the ZM platform with convincing evidence of her standard professional fee or may accept a default entry Level that is standard for ZM platform providers. Certification is provided by the ZM platform for a fee payable in its entirety to the ZM platform which is set by the ZM platform for providers and professional providers separately. The fee is commensurate with the fee intended to be charged by the respective provider. A provider may also initially charge a temporarily higher tentative price which is visibly marked as such. A tentative price will be overridden by the Universal Zeitmachine after an initial period of evaluation. A thereby-determined Zeitprice is called established. In either case, her Level and Zeitprice will increase if her Success rises. There is a natural equilibrium in what the market will pay for each provider's service, and the Zeitprice will automatically adjust to reach that equilibrium.
Setting the Fee for a Transaction: The ZM platform can enable a provider to offer discounts to specific customers through the use of discount lists. Customers who are not on the provider's discount list may negotiate a one-time discount with the provider.
Setting the Commission for a Transaction: The ZM platform can, for example, charge a commission for each transaction except those that solely benefit an approved charity. Commissions may vary based on the Level of the provider, the certification of the professional status of the provider, and possibly other factors.
Pricing lower than Zeitprice: The persona owner can set the actual price charged lower than the Zeitprice of the following communication modes independently: real-time communication; reading and replying to a text message; reading and replying to an appointment request; and consuming live or recorded broadcast content. However, the persona owner is not required to explicitly set these prices as they are based on the Zeitprice by default.
Discount Lists: A persona owner can offer lower rates to select sets of personas by adding them to a non-public discount list. The discount list is a list of personas and corresponding communication rates that specify a discounted rate to interact with the persona that owns the list.
Some entries in the discount list can be set to 100% to allow Friends to communicate without additional charge (with the possible exception of a ZM platform base membership fee). Friends are automatically added to the list at a 100% discount. Another use of the discount list is to provide loyal customers a reduced rate. For each entry the discount list can specify a fixed alternative price or a reduction from the varying Zeitprice (expressed as a percentage of the Zeitprice or a fixed discount).
Offline Work: Sometimes an expert advisor can and should do document research or preparation or development work without the client present. Sometimes the client is present but the communication is limited to establishing the beginning and the end of a service provided offline. If there is no preexisting billing relationship between advisor and client, or if the client is interacting anonymously, they may want the ZM platform to bill the client for the advisor's offline time. Offline work can be charged just like online work per unit of time.
Offline work hours are not required to be entered into the calendar with their exact date and time, but they will reduce the overall available time that the service provider has available. The time spent and charged for will be deducted from the provider's total available billable time per work-week, providing an additional input to the Zeitprice algorithm.
Maximum Time Budget: In one embodiment, the sum of the time all personas of a particular user can charge for is capped at a maximum of less than or equal to 24 hours/day.
The ZM platform can be operated as a private communication and digital transaction platform for selling and consuming time on the web. There are also other aspects of the invention. One such aspect is referred to as the ZM Platform Corporate Edition (ZM CE).
ZM Platform Corporate Edition: Company employees and contractors frequently need other people's time. They often need to ask experts inside and outside the company for information, advice and assistance. Experts who have scarce knowledge are flooded with more requests than they can handle.
The ZM platform CE allows a company to set up an internal marketplace for time using ZM platform technology and customized business rules. Management can put their Zeitmoney (real or virtual) where their top priorities are without choking off all access to experts by medium priority project teams. A team with less Zeitmoney to spend in the marketplace would budget more carefully and weigh both a provider's Zeitprice and the relevance of their expertise as detailed in an online profile. And staff and business partners outside the company's firewall/VPN could use the ZM platform's secure communications to participate in the marketplace as provider or as client.
Enterprise licenses could be sold for fees that are based on the number of users and/or the amount of time they buy and sell and/or the value of all transactions. The underlying ZM platform service could be hosted and operated on behalf of the customer by the entity operating the ZM platform, or internally by the customer's IT department.
In addition to highly secure internal communication, the service provides Zeitmachine-based time management and automated cost determination and allocation among its staff members within the entire virtual corporate network including remote access and mobile communication devices. It provides a new social engineering and corporate management paradigm. The effects in a corporation of Zeitmachine-aided cost and reward allocation are impossible to predict at this time, but the potential benefits certainly warrant large scale experimentation.
VERTICAL MARKETS: The ZM platform can be implemented to host specific vertical segments. One such vertical segment could be software and content development. By way of example, stock photo sites license existing content to businesses and pay royalties to rights holders. Packaged software companies license ready-to-use code. Where can a company go to obtain customized content and code? Today, businesses frequently in-source development to other divisions of their own company and/or outsource it domestically or internationally. However, creative content and content providers are not necessarily interchangeable in terms of skill sets and work product quality; the business insurance status of outside providers may not meet the company's requirements; before and after contracts are signed, the parties may use insecure connections to communicate with the provider; and for smaller projects, the time it takes to find developers, negotiate financial and legal terms and track the work can be as much or more than the time that engineering will take.
The ZM platform can be implemented to make software and content development more manageable, including by helping to find qualified engineers using profile search, determining what price they command in the market and facilitating negotiations over scope and price. One can meet with developers remotely using the ZM platform's secure communications and schedule those meetings using the ZM platform's time-tracking calendar. The ZM platform can include functions to simplify billing and payment, whether interdepartmental or international.
To facilitate outsourced projects, the ZM platform can be implemented to include standard legal agreements that cover a majority of situations. These agreements can be customized by choosing options on easy-to-understand forms or by enlisting legal service providers through the ZM platform. The platform can also be implemented offer developers and their customers escrow services to reduce the incidence of fraud and procrastination.
Through link-ups with leading insurers worldwide, the ZM platform can help developers to find and purchase required policies. It can deduct premium payments from developer accounts to prevent most lapses and can ensure that customers are informed when lapses occur.
The entity that is operating the ZM platform could charge a commission on software and content development service fees, of fees for legal advice and of insurance policy premiums. It could also charge escrow fees for software and content.
THE PRIVATE INTERNET: The ZM platform can be implemented with privacy features that could be configured to support a legally compliant Private Internet that hosts services such as Private Web, Private Email, Private Text Messaging, Private File Storage, Private Search, and the like.
The ZM platform can enable websites to integrate with its secure/private services.
To use a private website, file store, chat room or any other addressed location a ZM platform member simply logs in using the identity of any persona they own. A location may be either secret (address discoverable only by communication with its owner) or published (address discoverable via search). Each user of the location may be given a different and unique address and password for that location. Any such discovered location may be visited using the unique address of that location. The owner may require a visitor to use their unique (persona) password to access the content.
A location owner may charge a fee to a persona who wishes to discover the location's address and/or enter the location. The fee is subject to commission payable to the company. The owner may set the amount of the fee but there may be an option to base the fee on the difference between the Levels of the owner's and user's personas.
In one exemplary practice of the invention, the ZM provider: will know that a particular persona was using the Private Internet at a particular time for a particular length of time (metadata); will know which members owned the personas involved (metadata); will store metadata for the legally required time period; will keep metadata secret unless forced by warrant to disclose; will neither store addresses nor possess address decryption keys; and will neither store content nor possess content decryption keys.
At present, some social media platforms and other parties trace a user's Internet activity when the user visits their website or uses an app that they've instrumented. To enhance anonymity, the ZM platform could allow any user of its Private Internet to visit any website of the public Internet and access its content without being traced by the public website's operator or any third party.
The ZM platform-based Private Internet compares with similar-sounding technologies in at least the following ways:
VPN: Like a Private Internet, a virtual private network is isolated from the public Internet, its addresses are invisible by default and metadata like connection time may be stored. But VPNs are known to be wide open for sophisticated continuous eavesdropping in real time.
Deep Web: Like a Private Internet, the Deep Web hides its sites and content from the general public. It is not designed to be legally compliant while providing privacy.
Tor: Like a Private Internet, Tor enables a user to transmit data anonymously over the Internet to and from Tor-enabled sites. It has failed to provide privacy as claimed and it is designed to be legally incompliant.
DIGITAL CURRENCY: The ZM platform can be implemented as a digital adjunct to the worldwide service economy. Buyers will buy the time of sellers at rationally determined and economically justified rates that are consistent with traditional prices for similar time-based services. They have the option to pay and be paid in the ZM platform's internal digital currency based on the value of time which is universally established by the users qua their activities on the ZM platform.
A digital currency, referred to herein as Zeitmark, or Z-mark, can be implemented in accordance with a practice of the invention, and can be stable and convertible to various traditional and digital currencies, and stable. The Zeitmark can be grounded in the value of the available time of system users and providers. The value of the Zeitmark can be algorithmically determined on the ZM platform as a selected fraction of the total available time in a defined calendar-time interval of a “standard” user.
Adversation A conversation involving a commercial message or other market research question that an advertiser initiates with a willing consumer. The advertiser pays the consumer for their attention.
Client Depending on context, either a customer of a provider or a ZM platform app that runs on a user's networked device.
Conversation A private communication session among ZM platform personas. It could include live audio/video in one or both directions, live chat and/or text message threads.
Level A fundamental persona attribute that is similar in concept to a frequent flyer program level or tier. The higher the Level, the smaller the population at that Level (elite status); the more plentiful the privileges (elite benefits); the higher the Zeitprice (elite income)
Persona An identity that a user assumes when transacting on the ZM platform. It is similar in function to an AOL screen name or a Twitter handle. A user can have more than one persona, each displaying either their real name or a pseudonym.
Provider A persona able to provide a service through the ZM platform to client personas. A verified provider is a non-anonymous provider whose identity and credentials the ZM platform has accepted. A certified provider is a non-anonymous professional provider whose identity and professional credentials the ZM platform has accepted.
Service Fee A fee that a client pays a provider to engage in a conversation. The ZM platform collects the fee and keeps a percentage.
Subscriber A user who pays a recurring fee to the ZM platform [if such a fee is applicable].
Success A metric value that rises when a provider fills more time slots with higher-paying customers.
Zeitprice The upper limit price that each provider can charge consumers.
The Zeitprice scale is not continuous; it has thirteen discrete Levels. A new provider's Zeitprice is tentative if the provider has selected it. A tentative Zeitprice is subject to subsequent establishment by the Universal Zeitmachine following an initial period of evaluation and probation. A provider's established Zeitprice is the Zeitprice of a provider which has been established by the Universal Zeitmachine following an initial period of evaluation and probation or been established at regular, for example weekly, intervals on a rolling time window basis.
Zeitprice Algorithm A performance-based automated mechanism that calculates a fair Zeitprice for each provider based on their recent Success.
ZM An abbreviation for “Zeitmarket”.
A description of pricing (“Zeitprice”) aspects of the invention will next be provided.
ZEITPRICE OVERVIEW: The fundamental underlying principle of ZM is that people's time has value for which they should be compensated when spent on someone else's behalf To accomplish this, ZM provides a marketplace where an individual's time can be bought and sold. ZM continuously calculates the market price for the time of each provider. This market price is called the Zeitprice. The Zeitprice is the maximum chargeable price per time unit for a particular provider's persona.
The Zeitprice is determined by a server-based module called the Universal Zeitmachine (UZM) (element 61 in
Criteria: The Zeitprice calculation comes from a provided service and is based on algorithms involving success factors. The service relies on data provided by ZmCore/Zeitmachine.
The Universal Zeitmachine software collects sales data (time slots offered, time slots purchased, prices paid) from the individual Zeitmachines and these data and other factors to calculate “Success,” a metric that rises when a provider fills more time slots with higher-paying customers. Given the provider's current Level and their recent Success, the UZM algorithm decides whether to raise or lower the provider's Level or leave it alone. At each Level, there is a Zeitprice, which is the maximum amount the provider may charge for an hour of service to a consumer.
A new underpaid provider may ascend a Level every week and then settle into a Level for many weeks, months or years before rising further or slipping down the scale. The difficulty of earning a higher Level may be dialed up or down by management to maintain a target percentage distribution that works best for consumers, providers, and ZM.
Policies: In one embodiment, policies governing Zeitprice can include at least the following:
Define “laws” for performance-based mechanism for price finding.
There is a weekly determination of Zeitprice (provider's level).
There are Professionals and non-Professionals pyramids that set the Zeitprice for a selected number of levels, respectively.
There is a target distribution of providers across each pyramid.
Success=productivity×workload.
Productivity=actual price/Zeitprice.
Workload=number paid sessions/number offered sessions.
If Success>SUCCESS_THRESHOLD for at least OBSERVATION_PERIOD weeks, provider moves up a level.
If Success<(SUCCESS_THRESHOLD×LevelMinPrice/Zeitprice) for at least OBSERVATION_PERIOD weeks, provider goes down a level.
Providers can start at a level of their choosing. After OBSERVATION_PERIOD weeks, their Success values will determine if they move up, go down, or stay at their chosen level according to the Zeitprice rules above.
The UZM will provide to the Zeitmachine guidance on how the provider may increase her Zeitprice.
Zeitprice itself is unique in that having a system determine the maximum pricing for services a provider rendered for his/her time is unique.
UZM allows global changes to occur across the entire ZM. For example, UZM will allow management to adjust the level of providers based on market conditions, seasonality, sponsorships, human behavior patterns, or other criteria based on simulations.
The UZM is designed to meet the following needs: scalability to millions of users by using event-based architecture; high performance (target response times in tens of milliseconds) by using object-oriented programming (e.g., C) language; and extensible and modular by having well-defined APIs.
The Zeitprice algorithm is currently well understood. Allowances are made for changes in the future, as much as reasonably possible. It is anticipated that good API design will assist with this form of extensibility.
JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) requests can be made into ZMCore endpoints. UZM will collect various data from ZMCore in this manner.
UZM can also be implemented so as to interact with other subsystems in a similar manner (for example, by making JSON requests into the other subsystems in order to retrieve necessary data).
Level: It is anticipated that there will be a need to allow specific providers to stay at a certain level regardless of their performance.
A provider will want to be able to set an initial Zeitprice so that the provider doesn't have to slog through lower levels to get to where the provider thinks it should be.
A provider will want some feedback from ZM on how to move up to a higher level so it can have its Zeitprice maximum raised.
Digital Processing Environment in which Invention can be Implemented
The following is a discussion, to be read in connection with
It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the present invention provides methods, systems, devices and computer program products that can be implemented as part of the computer software or computer hardware of a computer, “smartphone”, tablet computer, or other computing device that forms part of a computer network or telecommunications network, along with a display, user interface elements such as a keyboard, tablet and/or mouse, memory, storage, and other conventional computer system or telecommunications system components. While conventional components of such kinds are well known to those skilled in the art, and thus need not be described in great detail herein, the following overview indicates how the present invention can be implemented in conjunction with such components.
The following detailed description illustrates examples of methods, structures, systems, and computer software products in accordance with these techniques. It will be understood by those skilled in the art that the described methods and systems can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of software and hardware, using conventional computer apparatus such as a personal computer (PC), smartphone, tablet computer, or equivalent device operating in accordance with (or emulating) a conventional operating system such as iOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Android, or other, either in a standalone configuration or across a network. The various processing aspects and means described herein may therefore be implemented in the software and/or hardware elements of a properly configured digital processing device or network of devices. Processing may be performed sequentially or in parallel, and may be implemented using special purpose or re-configurable hardware.
As an example,
The terms “memory”, “storage” and “disk storage devices” can encompass any computer readable medium, such as a computer hard disk, computer floppy disk, computer-readable flash drive, computer-readable RAM or ROM element or any other known means of encoding digital information. The term “applications programs”, “applications”, “apps”, “programs”, “computer program product” or “computer software product” can encompass any computer program product consisting of computer-readable programs instructions encoded and/or stored on a computer readable medium, whether that medium is fixed or removable, permanent or erasable, or otherwise As noted, for example, in block 1318 of the schematic block diagram of
Although the computer system 120 is shown as comprising particular components, such as the keyboard 122A and mouse 122B for receiving input information from an operator, and a video display device 123 for displaying output information to the operator, it will be appreciated that the computer system 120 may include a variety of components in addition to or instead of those depicted in
In addition, the processor module 121 can include one or more network ports, generally identified by reference numeral 125, which are connected to communication links which connect the computer system 120 in a computer network. The network ports enable the computer system 120 to transmit information to, and receive information from, other computer systems and other devices in the network. In a typical network organized according to, for example, the client-server paradigm, certain computer systems in the network are designated as servers, which store data and programs (generally, “information”) for processing by the other, client computer systems, thereby to enable the client computer systems to conveniently share the information. A client computer system that needs access to information maintained by a particular server will enable or cause the server to download the information to it over the network. After processing the data, the client computer system may also return the processed data to the server for storage. In addition to computer systems (including the above-described servers and clients), a network may also include, for example, printers and facsimile devices, digital audio or video storage and distribution devices, and the like, which may be shared among the various computer systems connected in the network. The communication links interconnecting the computer systems in the network may, as is conventional, comprise any convenient information-carrying medium, including wires, optical fibers or other media for carrying signals among the computer systems. Computer systems transfer information over the network by means of messages transferred over the communication links, with each message including information and an identifier identifying the device to receive the message.
In addition to the computer system 120 shown in the drawings, methods, devices or software products in accordance with the present invention can operate on any of a wide range of conventional computing devices and systems, such as those depicted by way of example in
In accord with conventional computer software and hardware practice, a software application configured in accordance with the invention can operate within, e.g., a PC, such as PC 131 shown in
The invention described herein has been implemented by the Applicant, using commercially available server and client hardware elements, and using commercially available software tools and libraries, including those listed below. An exemplary implementation of the invention as implemented by the Applicant is operational as of the filing of this application. Commercially available (or freeware or shareware) software tools and libraries used by the Applicant to implement an exemplary practice of the invention described herein include the following:
RUBY GEMS: PUMA, BYEBUG, BIGDECIMAL (1.2.0) 10-CONSOLE (0.4.2) JSON (1.7.7) PSYCH (2.0.0) RDOC (4.0.0)
Database is MYSQL and POSTGRESQL.
The UZM uses LIBEVENT (async) and JUDY (like REDIS): see: http://libevent.org/, http://judy.sourceforge.net/index.html;
(RACK, NGINX, RAILS, REDIS and GO are understood to be trademarks of their respective owners. Other terms used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.)
Target client platforms for the invention described herein include iOS, Android and Windows operating systems. Exemplary practices of the invention will support centralized data access codes with priority queues; and integrated and customized security codes, utilizing platform-provided security primitives and access methods. These may include any of NSURLSession and NSURLConnection on iOS; LibreSLL and secure local storage on iOS, and Xcode based developments. In a current exemplary implementation of the invention, the server platform utilizes a CentOS7 backend structure, nginx webservice and reverse-proxy structures, Rack, and Ruby on Rails with mySQL/Redis as the backend framework and access cache. A mySQL database structure is also utilized. In a current implementation of the invention, server-client communications are based on a standard https transactional model utilizing protocol buffers as content description.
Those skilled in the art will understand that the method aspects of the invention described herein can be executed in hardware elements, such as at the server level, or at a microprocessor level, such as within a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) constructed specifically to carry out the processes described herein, using ASIC construction techniques known to ASIC manufacturers. Such manufacturers include Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, California. The actual semiconductor elements of a conventional ASIC or equivalent integrated circuit are not part of the present invention, and will not be discussed in detail herein.
Those skilled in the art will also understand that method aspects of the present invention can be carried out within commercially available digital processing systems, such as smartphones, tablet computers and personal computers (PCs), operating under the collective command of the smartphone's or computer's operating system, such as iOS, Android or Windows, and a computer program product configured in accordance with the present invention. The term “computer program product” can encompass any set of computer-readable programs instructions encoded on a computer readable medium. A computer readable medium can encompass any form of computer readable element, including, but not limited to, a computer hard disk, computer floppy disk, computer-readable flash drive, computer readable RAM or ROM element. or any other known means of encoding, storing or providing digital information, whether local to or remote from the workstation, PC or other digital processing device or system. Various forms of computer readable elements and media are well known in the computing arts, and their selection is left to the implementer.
In addition, those skilled in the art will understand that the invention can be implemented using computer program modules and digital processing hardware elements, including memory units and other data storage units, including commercially available processing units, memory units, computers, servers, smartphones and other computing and telecommunications devices. The term “modules”, “program modules”, “components”, and the like include computer program instructions, objects, components, data structures, and the like that can be executed to perform selected tasks or achieve selected outcomes. The various modules shown in the drawings and discussed in the description herein refer to computer-based or digital processor-based elements that can be implemented as software, hardware, firmware and/or other suitable components, taken separately or in combination, that provide the functions described herein, and which may be read from computer storage or memory, loaded into the memory of a digital processor or set of digital processors, connected via a bus, a communications network, or other communications pathways, which, taken together, constitute an embodiment of the present invention.
The terms “data storage module”, “data storage element”, “memory element” and the like, as used herein, can refer to any appropriate memory element usable for storing program instructions, machine readable files, databases, and other data structures. The various digital processing, memory and storage elements described herein can be implemented to operate on a single computing device or system, such as a server or collection of servers, or they can be implemented and inter-operated on various devices across a network, whether in a server-client arrangement, server-cloud-client arrangement, or other configuration in which client devices can communicate with allocated resources, functions or applications programs, or with a server, via a communications network.
It will also be understood that computer program instructions suitable for a practice of the present invention can be written in any of a wide range of computer programming languages, including Java, C++, and the like. It will also be understood that method operations shown in the flowcharts can be executed in different orders, and that not all operations shown need be executed, and that many other combinations of method operations are within the scope of the invention as defined by the attached claims. Moreover, the functions provided by the modules and elements shown in the drawings and described in the foregoing description can be combined or sub-divided in various ways, and still be within the scope of the invention as defined by the attached claims.
Enable a user to create and maintain a fictional identity (persona) for use on the system (e.g., a server and computing devices in communication with the server via a communications network to execute a method according to the invention),
Exemplary embodiments and practices of the invention utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) in conjunction with the transactional platform described above (the “ZM Platform”) to yield further—and substantially synergistic—capabilities and advantages. An exemplary embodiment of an AI-enabled transactional platform in accordance with the invention is referred to herein as the AIZA Platform. AIZA is utilized herein as an acronym for Artificial Intelligence ZeitArbeit, i.e., Artificial Intelligence Temporal Work. The term “temporal work” is used herein to denote work done on a payment-per-unit-of-time basis, rather than on a fixed employer/employee basis.
In an exemplary embodiment, the AIZA Platform utilizes the above-described ZM Platform in an implementation that utilizes Artificial Intelligence(s) (AIs) for least one Persona of at least one user. Embodiments of the AIZA Platform thus comprise a transactional platform that supports Personas that map either to human users or to AIs.
In an exemplary embodiment, at least one user can be a legal entity such as a corporation or a government department. Such users provide services solely based on Personas that map to AIs.
In an exemplary embodiment, the AIZA Platform provides an online marketplace for services provided by human service-providers and by Artificial Intelligences (AIs). Certain instances of AIs are referred to herein as Artificial Minds (AMs). In particular, in accordance with the invention, Artificial Minds (AMs) are instances of multi-modal Generative AI and other AI based systems that can communicate in natural language in text or in audible form, in programming languages and other symbolic representations, and visual and auditory representations such as digital images and videos and music.
In exemplary practices of the invention, commercially available AI packages such as ChatGPT can be adapted to provide services in connection with one or more Personas of a given user.
In particular, in an exemplary practice of the invention, ChatGPT can be connected with at least one Persona on the AIZA platform to provide any of the services of which ChatGPT is capable, which, at present, is a substantial set of capabilities. Moreover, to become more specific to a set of desired purposes, and more related to the a given user's intention to present a Persona with a specific domain knowledge, ChatGPT can be customized and/or personalized by the user through training. The underlying AI of the Persona could also be an AI trained by some other person, or business entity, for a specific domain of expertise. These instances can be run externally to (physically outside) the AIZA platform and can be connected via a software plug-in in a respective Persona AI software module, an implementation detail within the knowledge of those skilled in the art, including in the deployment of ChatGPT and other commercially available AI packages.
In other exemplary practices of the invention, in contrast, the AI module of a given Persona can be an AI model running locally within the AIZA platform, such as on an online cloud service, but with protections in regard to privacy and security. These AI models can be derived from Open Source implementations of multi-modal generative AI models, licensed in source code or executable form from a provider outside of the AIZA platform (such as OpenAI), or uniquely developed by or for the user underlying the Persona.
In yet other exemplary practices of the invention, the AI for a given Persona can also be an AI underlying a Persona of another user of the AIZA platform, accessed with permission, such as in exchange for payment of a corresponding Zeitprice) via a software plug-in.
The use of software plug-ins and other aspects in connection with the deployment of AIs is known to those skilled in the art, including in the deployment of ChatGPT and other commercially available AI packages.
In still other exemplary embodiments of the invention, AMs/AIs can be represented visually by an animated avatar in a video call or conference. In accordance with the invention, AMs can be instances of general-purpose multi-modal systems, systems customized for specific domains or proprietary uses, and personalized systems.
Embodiments of the AIZA platform enable users to control and monetize their data, communication, and content, and allow human and AM-based providers of services to monetize their time. Moreover, in accordance with exemplary practices and embodiments of the invention:
By way of example, a human user can provide at most 24 hours per day of Service (or more likely significantly less—perhaps 15 hours/day—taking into account time for sleep and other human activities/requirements), summed across all of the human user's Personas. Each of the Personas is more or less in demand as measured by the amount of time offered/requested/sold by this Persona. If demand exceeds supply for a defined period of time, the Zeitprice will be increased automatically. (See discussion of Zeitprice above.)
In contrast, an AM/AI can provide 24 hours/day of Service for a potentially large number of consumers simultaneously. As the number of simultaneous consumers translates into possible license and compute resource costs, an exemplary metric of demand should allow the calculation of an hourly rate for the time of the AI that allows Consumers to pay (via the share in the transaction costs allocated to the AIZA Platform), at a minimum, for the total cost of possible license fees and computational resources connected with the services provided by a particular AI based Persona.
In some exemplary practices of the invention, all Consumers of a given Service will pay the same Zeitprice for the time of the Persona. Demand can outpace supply due to an intentional or actual limitation of available computational resources, resulting in a limit on the number of simultaneous Consumers. If this situation prevails for a defined period of time, the Zeitprice could be increased automatically, potentially resulting in a desired reduction of demand, i.e., fewer Consumers, or the number of simultaneously admitted Consumers can be increased due to an increase in computational resources.
It should also be noted that items shown in parentheses ( ) are optional in any given practice or embodiment of the invention.
In accordance with exemplary practices of the invention, it is noted that consumption of time, and payment for time, implies the consumption of content or services; that time can be used, in exemplary practices of the invention, as a measure for content and services; and that the price of time, in exemplary practices of the invention, can be used as a measure for the demand for content or services, including on the basis of their relevance, quality and value to one or more Consumers.
More particularly,
As shown in
Differences between the AIZA Platform 4000 and the ZM Platform 20 include the utilization of AI Module 4003 (internal to the transactional platform 4000) and/or AI Module 4004 (external to the transactional platform 4000). Although one of each module is shown, those skilled in the art will understand that multiple AI Modules can be utilized in connection with the transactional platform 4000.
As shown, platform-internal AI Module 4003 comprises, or can provide, functions or sub-modules of AI Training, Personalization, Customization, and Inference. Also as shown, platform-external AI Module 4004 comprises, or can provide, services or functions relating to AI Inference. AI Inference techniques are known in the relevant area of technology.
AIs inside the transactional platform 4000 can utilize AIs outside the transactional platform 4000 as a plug-in, in a manner which may be similar to the use of external websites in a private Internet configuration, under which the owner of an external AI (for example, an external AI utilizing ChatGPT or similar AI services or AI packages), will not be able to know what entity or entities are interacting with the external AI's services or packages. Other exemplary practices of the invention can utilize forms of private and secure communication to be executed between platform-internal AI modules and platform-external AI modules.
Thus, it should be noted that in exemplary practices of the invention, platform-internal AI Module(s) 4003 and platform-external AI Module(s) 4004 may be configured to enable selected connection(s) between platform-internal AI Module(s) 4003 and platform-external AI Module(s) 4004, as indicated by the arrows between Modules 4003 and 4004 shown in
More particularly, in exemplary practices of the invention, platform-internal AI Modules 4003 are trained, customized, and/or personalized; and thus, such platform-internal AI Modules 4003 will likely contain valuable information of users that should remain private and secure. (Hence, in exemplary practices of the invention, the platform-internal AI Modules 4003 are security-protected in a manner similar to that of User Data in ZmDB (ZeitMarket Database) 52 described above in connection with
In accordance with exemplary embodiments of the invention, for a given Persona to be AI based, there would typically be an AI module internal to the transactional platform, even if such platform-internal AI module is essentially virtual, in the sense of an interface for communication with the platform-external AI module as an instantiation of the respective Persona.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that using current forms of prompt-engineering, a plurality of seemingly different Personas can be created, even if such seemingly different Personas utilize the same underlying, external AI packages or services, such as, by way of example, ChatGPT.
Similarly, a platform-internal AI can function as a common resource for a plurality of seemingly different Personas.
Exemplary practices of the invention will enable the running of, and training/inference execution of, AIs internal to the transactional platform, as a service to create Personas with different specialties, characteristics and/or idiosyncrasies, which may, for example, be dedicated to a single user, for reasons of intellectual property protection and for uniqueness/demand creation reasons.
Other functions and operations of the transactional platform 4000 and its associated AI Modules are described above in connection with the flowcharts (FIGS. 36-39) and, more generally, all the other drawing figures in the present application for patent. The entirety of the text of the all the accompanying flowcharts is incorporated by reference into this Detailed Description of the Invention.
More particularly,
Compare
As shown in
As shown in
Also in the exemplary embodiment shown in
In turn, Internal User AIs 4110 can connect with, e.g., User Interaction Control Center 51 via Secured and Certified Connection (SCC) 31.
Also in the exemplary embodiment shown in
Further characteristics of the configuration of AIs/AI Modules shown in
While the foregoing description and the accompanying drawing figures provide details that will enable those skilled in the art to practice aspects of the invention, it should be recognized that the description is illustrative in nature and that many modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of these teachings. It is accordingly intended that the invention herein be defined solely by any claims that may be appended hereto and that the invention be interpreted as broadly as permitted by the prior art.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Pat. App. 63/530,472 filed Aug. 2, 2023, which is incorporated by reference herein as if set forth in its entirety herein, including all text and drawings thereof. This application is a continuation-in-part (CIP) of commonly owned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 18/197,063 filed May 13, 2023, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/149,572 (now U.S. Pat. No. 11,651,401), which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/557,229, which is a U.S. National Phase Pat. App. PCT/US16/22232 which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Pat. App. 62/132,489 filed Mar. 12, 2015, each of which is incorporated by reference herein as if set forth in its entirety herein, including all respective text and drawings thereof. This application incorporates by reference commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 11,651,401 and PCT publication WO 2016/145425. Each of the references are incorporated by reference herein as if set forth herein in its entirety, including all text and drawings thereof. In the event of an inconsistent description between this application and any of the documents incorporated by reference, the description in the incorporated document(s) shall be considered merely supplementary to the description set forth herein, and the description set forth herein shall control. Also incorporated by reference herein as if set forth herein in their entireties are the following US Patent Application Publications: 2014/0058849 Saifee et al.; 2014/0108283 Agrawal; 2014/0164184 Akolkar et al.; 2014/0164187 Dietz et al.; 2014/0279352 Schaefer et al.; 2015/0052009 Ketchel; 2015/0058171 Sandhu; and 2015/0356663 Ketchel et al.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63530472 | Aug 2023 | US | |
| 62132489 | Mar 2015 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 17149572 | Jan 2021 | US |
| Child | 18197063 | US | |
| Parent | 15557229 | Sep 2017 | US |
| Child | 17149572 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 18197063 | May 2023 | US |
| Child | 18791764 | US |
