Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
  • G06Q10/00—Administration; Management
  • G06Q10/10—Office automation; Time management
  • G06Q10/107—Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L51/00—User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
  • H04L51/21—Monitoring or handling of messages
  • H04L51/214—Monitoring or handling of messages using selective forwarding
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L12/00—Data switching networks
  • H04L12/02—Details
  • H04L12/16—Arrangements for providing special services to substations
  • H04L12/18—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast
  • H04L12/1859—Arrangements for providing special services to substations for broadcast or conference, e.g. multicast adapted to provide push services, e.g. data channels
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04L—TRANSMISSION OF DIGITAL INFORMATION, e.g. TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION
  • H04L51/00—User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
  • H04L51/21—Monitoring or handling of messages
  • H04L51/212—Monitoring or handling of messages using filtering or selective blocking

Definitions

• the present invention relates to messaging systems over the Internet.
• the Internet being a highly connected computer network, is profoundly changing messaging systems.
• Messaging systems over the Internet tend to be of two categories.
• the first category is direct messaging systems. These direct messaging systems include E-mail and instant message systems. Each of these direct messaging systems gives a user access to the recipient's E-mail or personal address.
• Some Internet service providers have member directories that allow searching to find members with certain interests. Once the user finds a member in the directory, the user can then send this person an E-mail.
• the problem with such a system is that the recipient may not wish to allow such general access from the public since it can result in "spam" or other unwanted E-mails.
• the second type of messaging system are meeting-place messaging systems.
• a meeting place could be, for example, an Internet bulletin board, in which users post messages and make comments based upon the messages posted.
• a downside of meeting-place messaging systems is that these systems also allow for access to member E-mail addresses. It is desired to have a new model for messaging systems on the Internet that avoid some of the problems with the prior art.
• the present invention is an invitation messaging system.
• a user (the "sender") provides a message along with profile information.
• a server uses the profile information to search a database to produce a list of people to whom the message is sent. This message is then provided to the people on the list (the "recipient"), without the names and E-mail information for this list of people being available to the user.
• This system has the advantage that it cannot be used to obtain the E-mail addresses for a list of people to send unwanted messages or spam.
• the recipients do not feel pressured by the messages because they know that they are anonymous to the sender. Thus, the recipients do not feel obligated to respond to the messages.
• these messages are provided on a dynamically created web page separate from the recipient's E-mail system.
• One embodiment of the present invention uses a spam filter at the server to check the messages and/or users before sending the messages to the recipients. In this way, commercial messages can be weeded out by the system.
• the system uses invitation filtering information from the recipients to selectively block messages.
• responses from the recipient to the user are sent through the server so that these responses can be buffered to produce anonymous responses to the user.
• the recipient can respond to a message without supplying a name or E-mail address to the user.
• Fig. 1 is a diagram of a messaging system of one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 2 is a diagram that illustrates the operations of a server in one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 3 is a diagram that illustrates a message and response for one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 4 is a diagram that illustrates the arrangement of the database in one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 5 is a diagram that illustrates a dynamically created web page used to display invitations in one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 1 is a diagram that illustrates one embodiment of the messaging system of the present invention.
• the messaging system 20 includes a user computer 22 running a web browser 24.
• the user uses the web browser 24 to go to a web page run by the web server 26.
• the user creates a message and provides profile information of the recipients of the message. For example, if the profile information "photography" is provided, the message is sent to people whose hobby is photography.
• the message and the profile information is sent to server 26.
• the server 26 includes spam-filtering software 28 which filters the messages.
• the profile information is used to search the database 30 to obtain a list of recipients.
• the message is provided to the recipient computers 32, 34 and 36.
• the message may be sent via E-mail or by using a dynamically created web page. Note that the E-mail addresses and names of the recipients are not provided to the user.
• the message is sent to recipient computers without the user knowing who these recipients are.
• the server 26 is adapted to have a message-buffering program 40.
• a response to be buffered is sent from the recipient computer to the server 26 and then a buffered response, not including the name and E-mail address of the recipient, is provided to the user computer 22.
• the recipient can send a direct E-mail response to the user's computer 22 if the recipient desires to provide name and E-mail address information to the user.
• Fig. 2 is a diagram that illustrates the operation of one embodiment of the server.
• the user provides profile information and a message to the server.
• the message is checked in the spam filter 50 to make sure that the message is not of a commercial or otherwise inappropriate nature.
• the user information is also checked by spam filter to see whether the user is a blocked user for the invitation system.
• the profile information is sent to the database checking program 52.
• This database checking program then produces a list of recipients.
• the list of recipients is provided, along with the message and user information, to a message broadcast software 54, and the message is then provided to the recipients. This can be done using E-mail or optionally by changing data in the database 56 which is used to produce a dynamically created web page as described below.
• a response can be sent to the message buffering program 58.
• the recipient identification information such as name and E-mail address
• the response I.D. is preferably created for each response.
• the response, stripped of the identifying information for the recipient, is then sent to the user.
• Fig. 3 is a diagram that illustrates the sending of messages in the system of the present invention.
• a message along with the profile information 70, is sent to the server 72.
• the server checks the profile and then produces the messages, such as the message 74 to John Smith and message 76 to Mary Wilson.
• the sender, Martha Jones does not receive the name or E-mail address of the recipients of the message. If one of the recipients desires to send a buffered response, the response is sent to the server which strips the name and E-mail information of the recipient, Mary Wilson, and sends on anonymous message 82 to Martha Jones.
• a non-buffered response may also be sent.
• Fig. 4 illustrates a database arrangement for one embodiment of the present invention.
• Fig. 4 shows a relational database 90.
• This database has a hobby table 92, an occupation table 94, and a name table 96.
• the profile information provided by the user such as the profile information "hobby is photography, " is used to check the database.
• the database is searched for keys corresponding to the hobby "photo-graphy. "
• the keys 001 and 002 are associated with the hobby "photography.
• the keys 001 and 002 are then used in table 96 to get a list of E-mail addresses to send the message.
• the message body is then sent using the E-mail address of each of the recipients.
• key 003 is not remrned because "photography" is associated with occupation rather than hobby.
• An alternate system using a dynamically created web page uses tables such as Tables 98 and 100.
• Each invitation message created is associated with a pointer to the message block.
• the recipients of a message are associated with an invitation number.
• a web page is dynamically constructed by searching the database 90 for invitations corresponding to the user's key number.
• Fig. 5 illustrates this in more detail.
• the recipient's computer 104 with a web browser 106 produces the dynamically created web page 108.
• the dynamically created web page is a personal invitation page for a user of the system. For example, when the user clicks on a personal invitation page, the server produces an HTML document constructed from database 90.
• Table 100 is checked to see the invitations for the key 001 corresponding to John Smith.
• invitations 576, 845 and 761 are found.
• invitation 576 corresponds, in Table 98, to a pointer to the message from Martha Jones.
• This message is then displayed at the recipient's web browser 106.
• the advantage of the message with the dynamically created web page rather than a traditional E-mail type message is that the messages are not considered as intrusive by the recipient since the recipient only needs to see the invitations when they go to the dynamically created web page. The messages don't clog up the recipient's work or home E-mail system.
• the system has an invitation blocking entry for some of the tables.
• John Smith is a lawyer but does not wish to receive invitations sent to lawyers, and he can block such invitations.
• the server accessing the profile information "lawyer" in the database 90 will not send a message to John Smith.
• the John Smith does want to receive invitations with respect to his interests in "photography” and "baseball. "
• the database 90 with category-based information would best be constructed using a system that easily obtains the category -type information from users.
• a web page builder using the category information is obtained using category input tools used in the creation of web pages. Details of such a system are described in the patent application "Web Page Builder Using Category Input Tools, " corresponding to Attorney's Docket No. 032845-001, filed on 08 March 2000. given the Serial No. 09/470.314. which is incorporated herein by reference.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
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• Human Resources & Organizations (AREA)
• Strategic Management (AREA)
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• Marketing (AREA)
• Quality & Reliability (AREA)
• Computer Hardware Design (AREA)
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• General Business, Economics & Management (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
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• Data Exchanges In Wide-Area Networks (AREA)

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Citations (4)

• 2000
  • 2000-10-24 WO PCT/US2000/029306 patent/WO2001052106A2/en active Application Filing
  • 2000-10-24 AU AU2000280319A patent/AU2000280319A1/en not_active Abandoned

Patent Citations (4)

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