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By Bill Slawski, on July 18, 2011 I’ve been doing research on Google’s social Q&A sites codenamed Confucius which are in more than 68 countries and multiple languages, but little known in the US. What I’ve seen includes some tantalizing hints about Google Plus, a description of how content submitted to Google Plus might be ranked in Google Web search, and a possible advertising model for Google Plus that was detailed in a Best Paper nominee at the World Wide Web Conference in North Carolina last year.
I started looking at Confucius a week ago, when I published the post, How Google Might Rank User Generated Web Content in Google & and Other Social Networks. My post describes a ranking signal for user generated content in Web search results, derived from a social network user’s perceived authority on different subjects and the quality of their contributions in interactions on the network, These combined scores might be used as a ranking signal in web search results for the content that user creates. The patent filing was published at the World Intellectual Property Organization website rather than the US patent office website, and the authors of the patent were from Google China, including Edward Y. Chang, the head of Research at Google China, seen in the profile page below:
Continue reading Early Google Circles and the Google Social Site You Might Not Know About
By Bill Slawski, on July 11, 2011 One of the challenges that face search engines is how to rank content found on sites that rely upon users to create that content, often referred to as User Generated Content or UGC. Towards the end of 2009, I wrote a post about a Yahoo patent that described some of the things they might consider looking at when ranking UGC, in the post How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content.
With Google’s recent launch of Google Plus, I’m anticipating posts and comments from their new social network system to start appearing in Google Web search results sometime soon.
A Google patent application published this past May at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) describes possible signals that Google might consider in its Web search results when it displays and ranks images and videos on photo and video sharing sites, questions and answers on Q&A sites, forum posts and responses, blog posts and comments, and social network posts, status updates, and comments. It was originally filed on October 29, 2009, but looks like it could be a system that could be used with Google + without too many modifications. The patent filing hasn’t been published yet at the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Continue reading How Google Might Rank User Generated Web Content in Google + and Other Social Networks
By Bill Slawski, on July 1, 2011 A Google patent application published in early May explains why Google might start showing social answers in Google search results. The basic premise is that some types of questions are best answered by library type results, and others by a village paradigm approach to information retrieval. In a village, people disseminate knowledge socially, with information passed from person to person, and retrieving information involves finding the right person, as opposed to the right document.
Here’s how a social answer to a query might appear in Google’s search results:
![A screenshot from the patent that shows a social answer to a query about [san francisco hotels pets] in Google search results.](http://www.seobythesea.com/wp-images/google-social-search-engine.jpg)
Continue reading Google As a Social Search Engine: Aardvark Answers & Circle Posts in Google Search Results?
By Bill Slawski, on June 30, 2011 Google is starting to show how social it might become with the introduction of Google + this week. I’ve signed up for an invite, and watched the demos, but I’m not going to weigh in on it until I have the chance to try it out (2011-6-30 – added: I missed my invite inadvertantly. Testing Google + now.)
Instead, let’s take a quick look at a Google Patent application that came out this week that shows another possible social tool from Google. This one allows you to start conversations with people who visit a web page, or have bookmarked the page, or contact people you already know while you’re on the page so that you can discuss it together. See a news story on a news paper site that you want to discuss with a friend, or even someone else who might be visiting that page. The process behind this patent filing enables you to do that.
Within your toolbar browser would be an instant messenging client attached to a “discuss this page” button, like in the screenshot from the patent filing below:
Continue reading Will Google Make Browsing A Web Page a Social Activity Too?
By Bill Slawski, on June 24, 2011 Need advice from an attorney on patents? Have a question about cooking Indian food? Want a document translated, or help building a widget or debugging a program?
Google tells us on one of their corporate information pages that: “Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful. ” But some information isn’t written down on paper, and some skills can only be taught from one person to another.
Imagine if Google set up a site that allows people to search for others with expertise and know-how in certain areas of interest, send requests for help, pay by credit points (virtual money allowing for countertrades or bartering) or actual money, and rate the providers skills or know-how in those specific interest areas? This site might enable people involved in the transactions to remain anonymous unless they want to disclose their actual identities.
A patent application published this week at the USTPO from Google describes how the search engine might set a system like that to “broker” know-how. One of the inventors listed on the patent is Cyrill Osterwalder, who appears from his LinkedIn profile and a January, 2011, presentation on Google and Privacy (pdf) to be Google’s Privacy Engineering Lead.
Continue reading Google to Broker Know-How with Virtual Money and Anonymous Users?
By Bill Slawski, on June 16, 2011 A patent application was published at the USPTO this morning that describes an interesting new application from Apple, enabling people to find others with common interests or common experiences or both, based upon location. The patent is fairly detailed, and I’ve somewhat brushed the surface with my description below. If you’re interested in location based services and social networking, it’s definitely worth a read.
It also has some of the more interesting images that I’ve seen so far in a patent filing this year (The person shown in them looks a little like a comic book villian), and they do a very good job of displaying an example of how this system could be used.
Continue reading Apple Files Patent on Buddy Finder App for Location Based Social Networking
By Bill Slawski, on June 5, 2011 Maybe a better question is when will TV set top boxes give people the ability to interact with others on their TV screens when watching? A patent filing published at the end of May shows one possibility that we might see in the future for making TV more social.
In addition to enabling television and social networking to be available via a real time interface, the set top box might allow people to preconfigure access to different social networks based upon channels on the television or certain time ranges.
For instance, you might associate ESPN with a Twitter Red Sox Fan Group at @Rdsxfans, as seen in the user interface screen below, or chat access to a specific person on Facebook between the hours of 7-10pm:
Continue reading Will Social Networks invade Your TV?
By Bill Slawski, on May 17, 2011 Last August, Google announced that they had purchased social network application creator Slide, in a post titled Google and Slide: building a more social web. Since then, Slide appears to have been running independently of Google, to the point where they’ve launched a Group Texting application named Disco.
While searching through patents granted this week, one of the titles grabbed my attention. System for targeting third party content to users based on social networks (US Patent 7,941,535) was granted on May 10, 2011 and originally filed back on May 7, 2008. It’s not assigned to Google, or even Slide, but one of the inventors named on the patent, Doug Sherrets, has been a Slide employee since 2007. His LinkedIn profile also discloses that he has been a Facebook Shareholder since 2005.
Continue reading Will Google Pursue Chillaxn’s Social Application Patent?
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