WO2012152981A1

WO2012152981A1 - Arrangement and method for social media and social networking

Info

Publication number: WO2012152981A1
Application number: PCT/FI2011/050422
Authority: WO
Inventors: Juho KYRÖLÄINEN; Laura AVONIUS; Juho Paasonen
Original assignee: Kyrol Inc
Priority date: 2011-05-06
Filing date: 2011-05-06
Publication date: 2012-11-15

Abstract

A service arrangement (601, 701), such as one or more at least functionally connected electronic devices like servers, comprising a data input entity (602, 706) configured to obtain service-related user input data including data relative to a plurality of users and data relative to a plurality of topics,a community management entity (604, 702, 704, 710) configured to host, based on the user input, a number of groups, wherein each group relates to a predetermined topic of said plurality and contains a number of users of said plurality as members, and to determine the number of members per each group and the activity of the group according to one or more predetermined activity criteria,a user interface (UI) entity (604, 702, 704, 710) configured to determine at least a portion of the UI of the service, wherein each group is represented as a visually distinguishable object (102), preferably a bubble or other circular or rounded shape, positioned in a user-navigable at least two-dimensional space (101, 1a, 201b), and wherein the size of the object indicates the determined number of members and the determined activity in the associated group, and wherein the distance between objects optionally indicates the similarity between the associated groups in terms of users and/or content thereof, and a data output entity (608, 706) configured to transmit service-related output data including UI data indicative of the UI, optionally a web-browser based UI, towards a terminal (612a, 612b) of a service user.A corresponding method is presented.

Description

ARRANGEMENT AND METHOD FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to computer and communication systems. In particular, however not exclusively, the invention pertains to social media, social networks and their application in forming an interest and topic-related social networking environment.

BACKGROUND

Social media applications such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Linkedln have gained tremendous popularity among the Internet users since the beginning of the 2000's. The concept of establishing various online communities through creation of an up-to-date on-line user profile by a desktop or portable computing device in a preferred social networking service and subsequently inviting a number of friends or business contacts to join the service for information sharing based on a personal 'wall' associated with the user profile seems to be the most typical implementation approach certainly still depending on the focus of the service (either business-oriented or a more like a buddy list). The service users bearing a 'friendship' or 'business partner' type of a relationship, may be enabled to contribute to each others' profiles and share thoughts, files, links, contacts and applications via the service whereas the remaining users, being not registered users of the service and/or registered contacts of other service users, may possibly access only limited basic information, if any, relating to others. The social networking solutions thus try to combine features from more traditional paper-form or electronic personal address books, calendars, blogs, and web pages into an ag- gregate (social) life portal for also others to use.

Notwithstanding the existing options, various problems associated with network arrangements and particularly, social media and social networking services, have not been not completely solved by the contemporary solutions.

Namely, even though managing, sharing, publishing and obtaining social information has been facilitated considerably by the present applications, interest and topic-related communication has not really taken a similar leap. While the focus of most services' is in the provision of user profiles whereto the profile owners and the trusted other users may easily post items, user communities, or 'groups', around a certain subject matter are still visualized, accessed, managed and otherwise handled mostly via primitive, text-satiated interfaces that primarily textual- ly list the available topics/groups, each having a descriptive textual name such as 'cat people' in connection with a user group such as discussion or other information sharing group for cat lovers, sometimes optionally provided with a complex and restrictive group hierarchy (e.g. hobbies->pets->cats) reminding of classical computer directory structures or with a text-based topic/group search tool for searching the already-available groups and themes. These solutions indeed enable creating and operating a group whereto a number of users may, typically as members thereof, contribute, but the associated use experience is still relatively old-fashioned and cumbersome.

As mentioned above, in some solutions a user may potentially search a group based on textual search terms, if he/she can manage to defme any in the first place and basically already identifies his/her genuine interest. Alternatively, the user may manually wade through the available representations of groups with optional filtering possibilities relative to a group name or description, for instance. Rather often the available representations simply contain an alphabetical listing with few straightforward sorting options, which is not particularly intuitive way of representing things in case the user does not exactly know which his/her current or future interests really could be at that time. However, as navigating between available topics and related user communities, i.e. groups, by community name listings is relatively boring, awkward, time-consuming and uninspiring, many informative and/or entertaining communities may ultimately remain un- found by the user in question. Accordingly, new groups around a new topic, or around old topic with a fresh perspective, may remain unestablished as the potentially interested users are so tired of the provided group management and navigation tools that they actually give up verifying the existence of a similar group in the first place and then decide to omit creating own group by themselves.

SUMMARY The objective is to alleviate one or more problems described hereinabove not yet satisfactorily solved by the current social media and social networking services, and to provide a feasible alternative for managing user groups relating to differ- rent topics and in many cases containing also various user-generated content. The aforesaid objective is achieved by the embodiments of an arrangement and method in accordance with the present invention. Accordingly, in an aspect of the present invention a digital service arrangement, such as one or more at least functionally connected electronic devices like servers, comprises:

-a data input entity configured to obtain service-related user input data including data relative to a plurality of users and to a plurality of topics,

-a community management entity configured to host, based on the user input, a number of groups, wherein each group relates to a predetermined topic of said plurality of topics and contains a number of users of said plurality of users as members, and to determine the number of members per each group and the activity of the group according to one or more predetermined activity criteria,

-a user interface (UI) entity configured to determine at least a portion of the UI of the service, wherein each group is represented as a visually distinguishable ob- ject, preferably indicative of a bubble or other circular or rounded shape, positioned in a user-navigable at least two-dimensional space, and wherein the size of the object indicates the determined number of members and the determined activity in the associated group, and wherein the distance between objects optionally indicates the similarity between the associated groups in terms of users and/or content thereof, and

-a data output entity configured to transmit service-related output data including UI data indicative of the UI, optionally a web-browser based UI, towards a terminal of a service user.

In one embodiment, the visualized object contains or is at least associated with descriptive text also visualized via the UI. The text may include at least one element selected from the group consisting of: group name, group description, group sponsor, group moderator, group owner, group creator, and the number of members the group has. The text may thus indicate a number of characteristics associated with the underlying group to the user. The text may be one factor to distinguish an object such as a bubble (substantially e.g. a circle in 2-d representation) from other objects in addition to e.g. object color and/or size. Each object representing a group may still bear the same general shape such as the shape of a circle. In some embodiments, different shapes could be applied for different objects. In another, either supplementary or alternative embodiment, the user input data may include at least one element selected from the group consisting of: user service registration information, user profile data, user service registration request, user e-mail address, user name, user password, profile picture, group join request, group leave request, group join request acceptance, group join request re- jection, and service leave request. Yet, the user input data particularly relating to topics, e.g. current or past user interests, may include at least one element selected from the group consisting of: group establishment request, group establishment data, group description data, group name data, group deletion request, group termination data, group post data, group conversation data, group-related multimedia data, group-related audio data, and group-related picture data. The user input may be optionally received via a number of intermediate entities such as other services.

In a further, either supplementary or alternative embodiment, the arrangement is configured to provide a group recommendation to a user. The arrangement may be configured to profile the user in order to establish the recommendation. The recommendation may be based on at least one element selected from the group consisting of: current group memberships of the user, group memberships of a number of other users in a common group, group tags, group tag similarities ac- cording to predetermined criterion such as classification or linguistic similarity, group name or group description similarity, established own group or groups, visited group or groups, and user data such as demographic data.

The recommendation may include a number of recommended groups such as one group only or a plurality of groups. The order of the groups may be selected such that the most recommended group according to predetermined one or more criteria may be indicated first in the case of temporal ordering or list-type representation, or centrally in the case of a visual object such as bubble-type representation, for instance.

Yet in a further, either supplementary or alternative embodiment, the object representing a group is provided with at least one color, such as a circumferential color or background color, that is configured to indicate the number of members the group has and/or the activity of the group along with the size of the object. Additionally or alternatively, at least one object-related color, or the color scheme related thereto, may be user-selected according to his/her personal preferences.

Still in a further, either supplementary or alternative embodiment the arrangement is configured to locate similar groups closer to each other, i.e. within shorter distance, and dissimilar groups farther away from each other, i.e. at a longer distance, in the UI. The similarity may be measured based on at least one element selected from the group consisting of: members, topics, and tag data. For instance, if two groups have common members or members with similar characteristics such as demographic features, the groups could be deemed as similar, which leads to a shorter distance of the associated objects. Corresponding logic could be applied to group topic (e.g. name or description) and tag data.

In some embodiments, the arrangement is configured to personalize at least portion of the service's features, such as visual UI, according to user information. Additionally or alternatively, the arrangement may be configured to localize and/or regionalize the service. The service, e.g. the UI thereof, may generally in- elude at least one element selected from the group consisting of: a feature such as a view, or 'bubble browser', including a number of visually distinguishable objects representing the selected underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of personally recommended objects or underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of generally popular, such as highly liked, ob- jects or underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of biggest objects representing the underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of most recent objects or underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of soonest- terminating objects or underlying groups, a feature such as a view or list of a number of certain topic such as certain tag-associated objects or underlying groups, and a feature depending on the properties and/or settings of the user terminal indicated to the arrangement via the data input entity. Any of the features may include or be a view to the aforesaid visualized, preferably user-navigable space. Such elements may be automatically or manually, based on activation of an available UI control feature, for example, provided to the user. The selection of visual objects/related groups for the service and associated service UI may be based on legal, regional and/or lingual assessment. For instance, for a region such as a country, continent, jurisdiction or lingual region, or for the user, having a first language as the main language, objects/groups associated with such language may be preferred. Accordingly, the remaining objects/groups may be completely omitted from the localized service and service UI. Location/region track- ing may be performed based on IP (Internet Protocol) address monitoring, for instance.

In some embodiments, a number of groups may be selected based on external input that is not directly linked with any particular user's input. For instance, the external input may be based on search engine statistics such as Google™ usage statistics. Most recent and/or most popular searches may be potentially associated with a number of groups of the service based on e.g. group descriptions, names and/or tags. As a result, found groups may be indicated to the user via the UI via the object view or a textual list, for instance. In addition or alternatively, statistics of the internal search engine may be applied.

In some embodiments, the arrangement may be configured to establish a user profile based on e.g. input data. The input data may be provided by the user himself/herself via the UI of the service and/or it may be input utilizing linked exter- nal data sources such as other services as described in further detail hereinlater. The user profile may be public or private, or it may contain a public part and a private part. Likewise, the user profile may contain a general part and group- related part(s). Group-related part may be shown to other user when the other user access the profile within the group context (e.g. from members list of the group). Preferably each user at least has a public profile unless he/she only uses anonymous or alias-enabled groups. The user profile may include at least one element selected from the group consisting of: first name, surname, picture, avatar, date of birth, place of birth, age, residence, address, country, (spoken) language^), profession, marital status, hobbies, education, employer, study place, e- mail, phone number, free form description, motto and external service user ID or a link to user-related external service page such as Facebook™ or Twitter™ profile.

Indeed, in some embodiments, the arrangement may be configured to allow es- tablishing a group the members of which may be or should be anonymous and/or aliases instead of public profile users. Preferably, the anonymous or alias members cannot be traced by other members back to any non-anonymous user or member profile. The arrangement may be configured to hide or prevent access to one's anonymous and/or alias groups usage from third parties. Alias profiles may include an alias name, desired picture and/or textual description, for example.

In some embodiments, the arrangement is configured to provide a user with a home page and/or user account information page, or a plurality of related pages, or other personal data contemplation and/or management infrastructure. The home page and/or user account page may be private. It may include at least one element selected from the group consisting of: public profile data, group profile data, personal account details, notification data such as event feed from group(s) wherein the user is a member, and linked (external) accounts data. Personal account details may include data that at least partially overlaps with public profile data. Moreover, strictly private data such as password data may be included.

In some embodiments, the arrangement is configured to associate a group with a number of web pages that may, as the home page or user account management infrastructure, utilize e.g. tabs and/or widgets for data representation and/or user control.

Yet in some embodiments, the arrangement may be configured to indicate a group-related passivity and/or decreasing amount of members to the users according to one or more predetermined criteria via indication such as 'no new posts' or 'no user visits' with reference to a predetermined period', or 'the number of members reduced' with reference to a predetermined threshold. The visually distinguishable object associated with the group may be configured to shake, for example. In addition to or instead of real-time visual indication via the service UI, e.g. a message such as an e-mail or internal service message may be provided to a number of users such as current and/or previous members, or estimated future members, about the status of the group. The purpose of the message may be to reactivate users to visit the group and/or provide again content to the group.

In some embodiments, the arrangement may be configured to import from or export to at least portion of a user profile relative to an external service such as Fa- cebook™, Twitter™ or Google™. APIs (application programming interface) such as Facebook Connect may be applied. Additionally or alternatively, the ser- vice account of the present invention may be linked with external account such as the aforementioned accounts to enable posting thereto and/or therefrom, or other communication, in the context of the present invention. Status updates or other notifications may be exchanged between the services. In some embodiments, the arrangement is configured to provide a view of the user-navigable at least two dimensional space comprising a number of objects utilizing a predetermined projection. The visual objects representing the underlying groups may be computationally positioned on the surface of a cylinder, sphere (or bubble) or other three-dimensional object, and the surface may be then mapped to the two-dimensional display view. Alternatively or additionally, the arrangement may be configured to process the edge areas, such as at least the vertical edges, of the view such that they fade away preferably gradually from the center portion. The objects at the border areas may be configured to spatially fade away instead of sudden disappearance.

In some embodiments, the size of a visual object relating to a group is positively proportional to the number of members and/or group activity. The size may grow when the number of members increases and vice versa. The size may grow when the activity increases and vice versa. Exponential, direct, or logarithmic proportionality may be applied, for example.

In some embodiments, group activity may be assessed using at least one factor selected from the group consisting of: number of group-related clicks, amount and/or nature of new content, number of new posts, number of new figures, and the number of new multimedia elements. Each factor may be analyzed relative to a predetermined, static or dynamic, time window, for example. The factors are thus preferably time-sensitive. The time window may be factor-specific or com- mon among a plurality of them. The latest events may have more weight and e.g. exponential emphasis may be utilized with the assessment.

In some embodiments the arrangement is configured to arrange a plurality of different user accounts or profiles with the service. For example, private users and organizational users, such as companies willing to establish a group for their product, may be separated optionally with different user rights relative to the service features. In addition or alternatively, a free account/profile and account/profile subject to a fee may be brought available with different features. In some embodiments, an advertisement and/or a group sponsor, creator, moderator, or owner (provided that these are separable in the applied embodiment of the service) may be visually indicated in connection with a group, e.g. in connection with object visualization of the group. In some embodiment, upon placing a pointer above a group-related object, such sponsor or other group-related data, e.g. description or tags, could be shown and/or audibly reproduced.

In some embodiments, the arrangement may be configured to provide a user monitoring aid, or 'watch' feature, to other users. Monitoring may include keeping track of and/or indicating the visited group(s), joined group(s), exited group(s), posted items, etc. Preferably, the target user is notified of the surveillance via the home page, for instance. Optionally, the target user may then ban monitoring and/or insert the monitoring user into a black list of users prevented from monitoring and/or communicating to him/her. This may be useful when the monitoring user harasses the monitored user via the service in response to the group-related posts of the monitored user, for instance.

In another aspect of the present invention, a method for a social media service to be performed by an electronic arrangement such as one or more at least functionally connected servers comprises:

-receiving service-related user input data including data relative to a plurality of users and data relative to a plurality of topics,

-determining, based on the user input,

-a number of groups, wherein each group relates to a predetermined topic of said plurality and contains a number of users of said plurality as members,

-the number of members per each said group, and

-the activity of each said group according to one or more predetermined activity criteria,

-defining at least a portion of the UI of the service, wherein each group is repre- sented as a visually distinguishable object, preferably a bubble or other circular or rounded shape, positioned in at least two-dimensional, preferably user- navigable, space, and wherein the size of the object indicates the determined number of members and the determined activity of the associated group, and wherein the distance between objects optionally indicates the similarity between the associated groups in terms of users and/or content thereof, and

-transmitting service-related output data including UI data indicative of the UI towards a terminal device of a service user. In some embodiments, instead or in addition to size, some other, preferably visual, characteristic of the object could be configured to reflect the number of members and/or the activity of the associated group.

Yet, a system comprising an embodiment of the arrangement and an embodiment of a user terminal for accessing the service hosted by the arrangement may be provided. The previously presented considerations concerning the various embodiments of the arrangement may be flexibly applied to the embodiments of the method mutatis mutandis and vice versa, as being appreciated by a skilled person.

The utility of the present invention arises from a plurality of issues depending on each particular embodiment. Firstly, the invention may enable constructing visual, both fun-to-play with and useful network services such as social media, e.g. social network, services, wherein instead of focusing on the personal walls, the focus may be redirected at user interests around certain topics. By the provided solution, the service users may share their interests with like-minded comrades in the topic-related groups and associated forums. Also professional users such as organization, e.g. corporate, users may utilize the service as a new marketing channel, information sharing forum, fan club site, support center, and feedback collecting point. The provided UI is intuitive, illustrative, practical, and simply fun. Technical details relating to groups may be cleverly indicated via the associ- ated objects, preferably circular 'bubble' shapes, and parameters such as size, dimensions, color(s), and absolute and/or relative positioning thereof.

Group recommendations may be provided automatically based on a variety of approaches and the users may also navigate in the group space manually by themselves. Both public profile and alias-based activity may be supported. Implementation may exploit e.g. HTML4 (Hypertext Markup Language 4) or HTML5 with related markup elements and APIs. Accordingly, downloading and executing computationally and/or memory-wise heavy additional software at the terminal end may be omitted, certainly still depending on the particular embodi- ment in question.

The expression "a number of refers herein to any positive integer starting from one (1), e.g. to one, two, or three. The expressions "a plurality of and "multiple" refer herein to any positive integer starting from two (2), e.g. to two, three, or four. The terms "topic", "theme" and "subject" are utilized herein interchangeably.

Different embodiments of the present invention are disclosed in the dependent claims. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED DRAWINGS

Next the invention is described in more detail with reference to the appended drawings in which Fig. 1 depicts one potential example of the UI provided by the arrangement or method in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 2a illustrates a first embodiment of group object activation.

Fig. 2b illustrates a second embodiment of group object activation.

Fig. 3a visualizes an embodiment of a group-related user profile as potentially shown via the UI of the service.

Fig. 3b visualizes an embodiment of a general user profile shown in connection with user account information.

Fig. 4 visualizes an embodiment of a group UI in accordance with the present invention.

Fig. 5 illustrates the different phases of facilitated group creation in accordance with a related embodiment.

Fig. 6 is a conceptual block diagram of an embodiment of the arrangement in accordance with the present invention.

Fig. 7 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the arrangement with emphasis on the associated hardware.

Fig. 8 is a flow diagram of an embodiment of a method in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

Figure 1 illustrates an embodiment of the service UI that enables examining the status of a number of service related communities, i.e. groups, in a clear, intuitive and relaxed manner. The UI includes a bubble browser 101 that is configured to represent a number of groups as bubbles 102. Alternatively or additionally, in some embodiments other forms could be utilized instead of bubbles. A bubble may be rendered substantially as a circle, ellipse, or other, preferably circumferential, element. The browser may offer navigation functionality (e.g. move left, right, up, down) and optionally zoom (in/out) functionality. All the bubbles may be logically disposed on the same plane such that the navigable space of bubbles or other forms could be classified as two-dimensional. In some other embodiments applying e.g. 3-d space for deploying the bubbles, even further axis of navigation for proceeding towards the terminal screen/reversing from the screen could be provided to the users to enable navigate in the 3-d space via 2-d extracts thereof. With reference to the application of 3-d space, the related bubbles or other visual objects are preferably modeled as three-dimensional entities, whereas in 2-d embodiments they may naturally have only two dimensions. A first number of bubble characteristics such as location, dimensions (e.g. radius/diameter), color, and/or associated sound effect(s) may be selected so as to indicate a second number of group characteristics such as the number of members, group activity, group topic, group sponsor, last active member, etc. The first and second number may in some embodiments match and a certain group characteris- tic may be linked with a certain predetermined bubble characteristic, wherein the link may be e.g. a bijection type of a two-way navigable link, for instance. However, also a larger number of group characteristics may be converted into a smaller number of bubble characteristics, or vice versa. In addition or instead of graphical indications, various other visual such as textual indications may be applied. For instance, group name, or 'title', may be indicated in the center of the bubble. Further data, such as the number of group members and/or identity of the group sponsor 108 may be visually indicated. A portion of the UI may be provided with a control 104, such as a radio button, checkbox or a dropdown control, for determining one or more interesting characteristics of the groups of the group space to be used as search terms or generally filtering constraints for picking up the desired groups for visualization to the user. E.g. personalized group recommendations, which may be based on e.g. personal service use history and/or user demographics, biggest bubbles, bubbles as- sociated with biggest groups in terms of content and/or members, newest bubbles (e.g. based on creation date), oldest bubbles, and/or highly valued bubbles ('showdown', based on e.g. user ratings) may be independently selectable as a filtering or inspection criterion for examining the available groups. Further, bub- ble search functionality 106 may be provided. Textual search may refer to group names, descriptions, creators, owners, moderators, sponsors, content and/or tags, for instance. Preferably, the service controls the naming of the groups so that the names remain unique, which facilitates conducting and managing group searches, for example.

Accordingly, different inspection possibilities such as the ones 104, 106 described above offered to the user for filtering and visually examining the resulting group space from a desired standpoint may thus apply usage data such as sta- tistics relating to the groups, group definition data such as names, descriptions, tags, and e.g. additional factors such as time-related factors, optionally timers. For instance, a group-related rating may be applied and valid only for a limited time in the light of bubble browsing and related filtering constraint (e.g. 'show most popular bubbles'), whereupon the rating-based view maintains its topicality.

For example, the number of members of a group and/or group activity may be indicated via the bubble size and the bubble-associated color. The bubble size may give a coarse indication whereas the color adds to the resolution thereof, or vice versa. A predetermined selection of colors and/or color shades may be ap- plied for indication purposes. In some embodiments, e.g. substantially white or generally brighter color associated with a bubble may indicate larger and/or more active group than a darker color, or vice versa.

The service entity may be configured to support a plurality of different user ac- counts such as private accounts and organization, e.g. corporate, accounts. Some accounts may be free of use such as private accounts and some may be associated with a fee, such as the corporate accounts. The fee may be a life-time fee or it may expire periodically such as monthly or annually, for instance. A higher-level account such as a fee-based account may provide additional rights and/or func- tionalities to the user in contrast to a lower level account such as a free account. User levels and rights may be group-specific. For example, a number of statistical analysis tools may be provided for a higher-level user being the owner, creator, moderator or sponsor of a group to facilitate analyzing the members, content and/or various usage aspects of the group.

Alternatively or additionally, a higher level account may be dynamically obtained as a result of fulfilling the related number of criteria. The criteria may define necessary service usage activity (e.g. in terms of posts, created groups, mod- erated groups, and invited friends, etc.) for rising in the user hierarchy, for example.

Correspondingly, realization of a predetermined criterion such as event may be monitored in order to insert a specific group in the search results of a group search initiated by the user. The event may be such that the occurrence thereof introduces or at least facilitates introducing the group into the search results even though otherwise it would not be present therein. For instance, paying a specific advertising fee may raise the target group into the search results and/or reflect e.g. the visualization of the group entity such as bubble in the shown space or list. For example, more centered position, eye-catching color, and/or bigger size may be provided in response to the fulfillment of the criterion.

In some embodiments, visual effect may be applied to indicate predetermined group-associated status data to the user. For example, passive and/or dying group (e.g. members leaving, passivity increasing) may be configured to shake along a predetermined axis or path in the UI view.

In some embodiments, a user may be enabled to delete a group or at least cancel his/her own membership therein by subjecting a predetermined UI action to the related bubble, e.g. point-and-select type action, such that the bubble is animated to burst, catch flames and burn or otherwise disappear from the bubble space. In the background, the group or group membership may be canceled from the data records of the service.

Provision of group recommendations may be implemented utilizing a number of desired methods. Recommendations may be visualized through the bubble browser, for instance. Alternatively or additionally, recommendation lists comprising at least text and optionally graphics (e.g. official group picture such as logo) may be provided. Recommendations may be output via the service (online) and/or via messaging such as via e-mail message(s) triggered by the service.

In one embodiment, the service arrangement may be configured to keep track of the group memberships of a first user. Other members of these groups may be de- termined and a list of popular groups established among such members. The most popular groups not yet belonging to the group repertoire of the first user may be then recommended to the first user. In addition or alternatively, group tags associated with first groups the first user is member in may be checked and other groups having at least one common tag determined. A predetermined number of other groups having the largest number of common tags with the first groups may be recommended.

A tag to be associated with a group may be freely user selectable by the group creator or moderator, it may be selected from predetermined options, and/or it may be automatically generated e.g. on the basis of group name, group description, and/or group content. The tag may include text or other classification- facilitating information such as numerical classification determined on the basis of e.g. a predetermined classification system.

In addition or alternatively, users may be profiled based on user account information, e.g. demographics. The profiling procedure may apply e.g. a selected neural network modeling method for performing the task. User clusters may be thus determined and a number of groups associated with each of them. Recommendations may be constructed accordingly.

In addition or alternatively, common terms or strings may be searched among group names and/or descriptions. A group that bears at least one factor such as a term in the group name or description in common with a first group already having the first user as a member, may be recommended to the first user.

As a further option, a group regularly visited by a user may be recommended in the light of a true membership if the user is not a member of the group yet, as in some embodiments, a group may be visited and at least some associated data inspected without being a member. Regularity may incorporate a temporal threshold, i.e. a predetermined number of visits per a predetermined period such as a month may be required for triggering generating such recommendation.

A number of different recommendation techniques and/or recommendation- affecting factors, such as the ones reviewed above, may be utilized in parallel or overlapping fashion. For example, in some embodiments a plurality of conditions may have to be fulfilled before a group is worth recommending. Alternatively, fulfillment of a certain criterion or criteria only may be considered as sufficient and optionally a plurality of recommendations arising from the exploitation of mutually at least partially different criteria may be provided even simultaneously to the user. Figure 2 discloses an embodiment of activating a group-associated object via the UI of the service, and related events. At 201, a two-dimensional space is shown including a plurality of bubbles representing the underlying topic-associated user groups one of which 202a has been selected by the user via the UI. The selection may have been actuated using a point-and-select (e.g. click) type action via a mouse, touch screen or other control input device, for example, in response to which the target bubble 202a has been visually highlighted by expanding the size thereof and by setting forth the picture and description thereof for the user's in- spection in addition to e.g. owner, creator and/or moderator information. The highlighted bubble may thus include a number of elements not available in the basic view of the bubble (browser). An element may include a control such as a button enabling the user, via activation thereof, to obtain further information about the group. For example, a group view such as a group-associated main page may be rendered to the user and the user may be transferred to the group- specific service portion from the bubble browser.

Figure 2b illustrates another embodiment, wherein the user-indicated group 202b has been selected and related group information been output. Additionally, at least portion of the data originally residing in the background has been modified as to the visualization thereof such that the obtained overall result facilitates concentrating on the shown details of the selected group 202b. In particular, in the visualized example the contrast of the background has been lowered for the purpose. Alternatively or additionally, brightness could be adjusted.

In some embodiments, a group-visualizing object such as a bubble may have been associated with at least one theme color that, upon activation of the group on the UI, appears also elsewhere. For example, the logo of the service may be at least partially responsive to the theme color. At least one logo color may dynam- ically follow the active group theme color among other options.

Figure 3a illustrates an example of a view 301 containing user details. The view includes data from the public user profile in addition with group-specific user information. The profile may be accessible from the group page as described here- inafter with reference to Figure 4, for instance. The group-related profile may include a common part 302a that describes the user generally and a group-related part 302b that characterizes the user particularly in the context of the group in question (in the visualized case, the group is obviously about Xbox™ game con- sole) to other users via a number of information elements (in the figure, favorite game etc.). The common part 302a may indeed include a number of information elements available in the general public profile of the user. Upon or after joining a certain group, the user may also preferably add a corresponding group- specific portion to the user profile.

Figure 3b illustrates an example of user account data visualization from the standpoint of the user himself. User profile and generally user account management may be implemented using various different techniques as understood by a skilled person. In the shown embodiment, the view 301b includes several information pages or sub-views accessible through a number of associated controls, particularly the associated tabs 304a (user's public profile accessible by other users), 304b (bubble profiles, i.e. group-specific profiles with reference to Figure 3a and group membership data, may include data about alias profiles), 304c (online notifications such as service operator messages, personal messages and group-related information or data relative to actions by monitored users), 304d (account settings such as login information or UI personalization options), and 304e (linked accounts of external services for data import, export, or exchange therewith).

Via the account management, each user may conveniently inspect and preferably also manage personal information part of which is also public and available to other users depending on the applied privacy settings, which may be in some embodiments at least partially user-controllable. Advantageously, the user may personalize the service via the account management options. Personalization may affect data visualization such as group visualization (e.g. used visualization object such as bubble selection) and/or UI personalization such as widget-based personalization that may also affect the location and content of the UI elements such as the bubble browser. Preferably the aliases associated with a user for group interaction are not shown to others.

Further, the user may be enabled to inspect a listing of other users monitoring him/her in the service and preferably also block monitoring most preferably user- specifically by entering a user to a personal black list.

Figure 4 illustrates an embodiment of a group view 401, or generally group- related UI, in accordance with the present invention. When the user accesses a group hosted by the service, he/she may first be provided with a view as shown. Again, the view may contain a number of sub-views or pages including, but not limited to, front page 402a that may include e.g. latest events (posts, calendar data update, gallery data update, member joining/resigning etc.) occurred during the group context in a form of a feed, for instance, gallery 402b provided with e.g. images and/or videos, conversations 402c including e.g. a number of discussion forums, library 402d with topic-associated data such as product or person data, for instance, live chat 402e that may incorporate instant messaging, calendar 402f storing information about group and/or group's topic-related events such as group gatherings or tv programs about the topic, and members 402g preferably providing a list of group members with access to member (user) profiles that may contain a group-specific part as reviewed hereinbefore.

The current view 401 incorporates the topical information associated with the active tab 402a, group description 404j with a picture, a welcome or other infor- mation note 404h by the creator, owner, moderator or sponsor of the group, and names/pictures of a number of selected users 404L The users 404i selected for the topical info page may include the last active members according to the utilized one or more criteria such as posted items, currently logged-in members and/or members accessing the group at the shown instant.

Figure 5 illustrates one embodiment of group creation from the standpoint of a service user. The execution order of shown items is not critical. All items such as color theme selection do not have to be executed or the execution does not have to incorporate user intervention. The execution may be automatically handled by the service based on predetermined logic. At 502, the service arrangement may be configured to ask group name from the user. Preferably, the group names are unique, which is checked by the arrangement upon receipt of user input. A request to amend the group name is provided if an identical group name is found. Alternatively or additionally, a database of excluded group names, words, sen- tences or generally strings may be applied to block e.g. dirty words from the group names and/or group descriptions.

At 504, the service arrangement may, based on user input, record the group (bubble) description and/or tags. The tags may be manually input by the user and/or selected from predetermined options, for instance. Group images such as theme picture or logo may be uploaded, or selected from a plurality of predetermined options. At 506, a number of theme colors may be determined for the group. The colors may appear in the group visualization according to predetermined scheme. The visualization may also include fixed or otherwise automatically determined colons) in addition to the user-determined theme colors.

At 508, a number of group parameters are determined relative to the security thereof, for instance. Join request acceptance may be automatic or it may be remain controllable by a number of users with appropriate rights such as the group creator or moderator. The visibility of group internals may be selected from a plurality of options, e.g. visibility to members only or visibility to anyone. The allowed use of profiles may be defined. Public profiles, alias profiles or both may be allowed, for example. After gaining the necessary user input, the service arrangement may establish the group according to the creator preferences. The bubble may show up in the bubble space.

Figure 6 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the arrangement 601 in accordance with the present invention from a logical standpoint. The embodiment may comprise a data input entity 602 to obtain user input from their terminals 612a, 612b, optionally via a number of communications networks 61 1, and other in- puts, such as data imports or notifications from external service infrastructures 610, provided to the service arrangement for running the service of the present invention. Service users may include private users and corporate users. Likewise, service users may include group creators and group members. Such user categories may overlap in many use scenarios. A community management entity 604, or community management infrastructure, may be provided to host and maintain such as store and/or keep track of service data, e.g. a number of related databases, relating to the service users, topic-related groups, content items such as posts, images and videos, and their mutual relationships according to the predetermined service logic. Group recommendations may be calculated. Group repertoire may be limited region-wise, for example. The user interface entity 606 may be then configured to determine and control the UI of the service for interaction with the users, the UI applying the data hosted by the community management entity 604 and providing user control to manage it. The UI entity 606 does not necessarily lock, in all embodiments, the exact visual appearance of the UI at each terminal 612a, 612b as it may be ultimately defined or at least fine-tuned locally at the terminal and/or intermediate entity such as a service proxy based on e.g. terminal and/or network constraints such as transmission capacity or other capabilities, e.g. screen size, but it 606 still preferably at least partly generates the UI relating to what data should be shown (data selection), how the data should be shown (e.g. bubbles according to the HTML5 capabilities), what type of input could be collected from the user, etc. The data output entity 608 may be finally provided to output service data such as UI data towards the terminals 612a, 612b of service users or data exports or notifications to various possible external service infrastructures 610. Physically any of the above, at least functionally connected logical entities may be realized as such, combined with one or more disclosed and/or other entities, or split into further (sub-)entities. Figure 7 illustrates the internals of an embodiment of the electronic service arrangement 701 in accordance with the present invention. The service entity 701 in question is typically provided with one or more processing devices capable of processing instructions and other data, such as one or more microprocessors, micro-controllers, DSPs (digital signal processor), programmable logic chips, etc. The processing entity 702 may thus, as a functional entity, physically comprise a plurality of mutually co-operating processors and/or a number of sub-processors connected to a central processing unit, for instance. The processing entity 702 may be configured to execute the code stored in a memory 704, which may refer to service management software 710 in accordance with the present invention. Accordingly, e.g. the aforesaid community management and UI entities may be realized. Software 710 may utilize a dedicated or a shared processor for executing the tasks thereof. Similarly, the memory entity 704 may be divided between one or more physical memory chips or other memory elements. The memory 704 may further refer to and include other storage media such as a preferably detach- able memory card, a floppy disc, a CD-ROM, or a fixed storage medium such as a hard drive. The memory 704 may be non-volatile, e.g. ROM (Read Only Memory), and/or volatile, e.g. RAM (Random Access Memory), by nature.

The local physical UI (user interface) 708 may comprise a display, e.g. an (O)LED (Organic LED) display, and/or a connector to an external display or a data projector, and a keyboard/keypad or other applicable control input means (e.g. touch screen or voice control input, or separate keys/buttons/knobs/switches) configured to provide the operator of the arrangement entity with practicable local data visualization and/or device control means. The UI 708 may include one or more loudspeakers and associated circuitry such as D/A (digital-to-analogue) converter(s) for sound output, and a microphone with A/D converter for sound input. In addition, the entity comprises a wired or wireless communications interface 706 providing e.g. Ethernet or other LAN, WLAN, Firewire or USB (Universal Serial Bus)) connectivity for communication with network infrastructure(s) and/or terminal devices, i.e. data input and output. It is clear to a skilled person that the entity may comprise few or numerous additional functional and/or structural elements for providing beneficial communication, processing or other features, whereupon this disclosure is not to be construed as limiting the presence of the additional elements in any manner.

Figure 8 discloses, by way of example only, a flow diagram of an embodiment of a method in accordance with the present invention. At 804 an entity such as an electronic arrangement in accordance with the present invention is obtained and configured, for example, via installation and execution of related software and hardware for executing the method. At 806, input data such as user input and optionally other input data from external, possibly non-terminal, entities such as external services are received. The input data may provide the arrangement, among other options, with information for establishing/terminating groups around user interests, joining/removing members from the groups, adding/removing users to/from the service, and managing group-associated user-provided content such as posts, data items such as image, audio or video files, etc. or external service- generated content such as user-related notifications from an external service. At 808, a number of groups may be established and/or managed with proper members (users) according to the received input.

Also the number of members and group activity according to predetermined criteria may be determined 810, 812, respectively, for each target group, whereupon a value of a preferably visual parameter such as the size of a visually distinguishable object representing a group and shown via the service UI view, such as browser-based UI view, may be specified at 814, which may refer to generating data enabling visualization of predetermined, desired portions of the overall UI in the target terminal, for example. Naturally, the UI may also contain portions that are not visualized such as speech input capture feature for control purposes optionally further associated speech recognition feature in the context of speech commands or e.g. group-related and/or user-related content provision such as audio file provision for a personal profile or a group (e.g. as audio post). Similarity between the visualized groups may be also optionally determined and further op- tionally visually indicated by the distance between the visualized objects representing the groups, for instance. In some embodiments, lesser similarity could be indicated by increased distance and vice versa. Service data is transmitted at 816 including data for displaying the current UI view of the service at a user terminal incorporating a number of visual objects such as bubble circles representing the associated groups with the visual characteristic such as size, color and/or mutual distance defined as explained above. The method execution is ended at 818.

The mutual ordering and overall presence of the method items of the method diagram disclosed above may be altered by a skilled person based on the requirements set by each particular use scenario. For example, the order of items 810 and 812 may be reversed in some embodiments. The broken feedback arrows depicts the potentially repetitive nature of method items, i.e. the service is managed over a time span such as months or years very likely covering multiple, potentially numerous, inputs from a plurality of users and optionally external services or other data sources, community management actions responsive to the input such as group formations/deletions, membership status changes, and group-content provision, and corresponding output towards user terminals and optionally external services or other data targets.

Consequently, a skilled person may, on the basis of this disclosure and general knowledge, apply the provided teachings in order to implement the scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims in each particular use case with necessary modifications, deletions, and additions, if any. For example, in some embodiments the service could be theme-limited (sports, business, etc.) such that the groups to be hosted should relate to a certain common topic.

Claims

1. A service arrangement (601, 701), such as one or more at least functionally connected electronic devices like servers, comprising:

-a data input entity (602, 706) configured to obtain service-related user input data including data relative to a plurality of users and data relative to a plurality of topics,

-a community management entity (604, 702, 704, 710) configured to host, based on the user input, a number of groups, wherein each group relates to a predetermined topic of said plurality of topics and contains a number of users of said plurality of users as members, and to determine the number of mem- bers per each group and the activity of the group according to one or more predetermined activity criteria,

-a user interface (UI) entity (604, 702, 704, 710) configured to determine at least a portion of the UI of the service, wherein each group is represented as a visually distinguishable object (102, 202a, 202b), preferably a bubble or other circular or rounded shape, positioned in a user-navigable at least two- dimensional space (101, 201a, 201b), and wherein the size of the object indicates the determined number of members and the determined activity in the associated group, and wherein the distance between objects optionally indi- cates the similarity between the associated groups in terms of users and/or content thereof, and

-a data output entity (608, 706) configured to transmit service-related output data including UI data indicative of the UI, optionally a web-browser based UI, towards a terminal (612a, 612b) of a service user.

2. The arrangement of claim 1, configured to determine the UI so as to enable a web-browser based service access, optionally compliant with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) standard, preferably compliant with HTML5.

3. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to provide a group recommendation (101, 104) to a user.

4. The arrangement of claim 3, configured to provide the group recommendation based on at least one element selected from the group consisting of: current group memberships of the user, group memberships of a number of other users in a common group, group tags, group tag similarities according to predetermined criterion such as classification or linguistic similarity, group name or group description similarity, group or groups established by the user, group or groups visited by the user, and user data such as demographic data.

5. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to, in order to indicate the similarity between groups, locate mutually similar groups closer to each other and dissimilar groups farther away from each other according to predetermined one or more criteria.

6. The arrangement of claim 5, wherein the similarity estimation between two groups is based on inspecting at least one element selected from the group of: common user or users, similar users, same group creator or moderator, similar group name, similar group description and similar group tags (504), whereupon the presence of a predetermined number of such elements prefer- ably increases the determined similarity figure between the two groups.

7. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to host a public profile for each user, optionally with a public group- specific profile, and a number of group-related aliases for a number of users (301, 301b, 304a, 304b, 508).

8. The arrangement of any preceding claim, wherein group activity is assessed utilizing at least one, preferably time-sensitive, factor selected from the group consisting of: number of group-related clicks such as group visits or other user actions, amount of content, nature of content, number of posts, number of figures, and the number of multimedia elements.

9. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to import user details, such as profile or account data, and/or user-related notification data from an external entity (610) such as external service, optionally a social media ser- vice.

10. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to export user details, such as profile or account data, or user-related notification data to an external entity (610) such as a service for exploitation such as status updates therein.

1 1. The arrangement of any preceding claim, wherein the user input includes at least one element selected from the group consisting of: group join request, group leave request, group join request acceptance, group join request rejec- tion, group establishment request, group establishment data, group description data, group name data, group deletion request, group termination data, group post data, group conversation data, group multimedia data, group audio data, and group-related picture data.

12. The arrangement of any preceding claim, wherein the service is localized region-wise such as country, jurisdiction, or continent-wise, as to the availability of a service element, such as a certain group, to users from a certain region or action the users from a certain region are able to execute in the service.

13. The arrangement of any preceding claim, wherein a group associated with a first language is omitted from the group selection offered to a user or user population associated with a second language and not the first language.

14. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to receive user ratings relative to groups and preferably determine a number of most popular groups utilizing the ratings, and preferably further configured to indicate one or more of said most popular groups to the user.

15. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to provide a first user with a watch feature associated with a second user to automatically monitor and optionally keep track of one or more actions such as posts of the second user in the service.

16. The arrangement of claim 15, configured to provide a black list functionality enabling the second user to prevent the first user from utilizing the watch feature relative to the second user.

17. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to select a number of groups for representation to the user, preferably via the associated visually distinguishable objects in said user-navigable at least two-dimensional space, based on available search engine statistics, optionally internal or external search engine statistics.

18. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to indicate related group name (502) in connection with the visually distinguishable object (102, 202a, 202b), optionally further indicate the creator, moderator, owner or sponsor of the group (108).

19. The arrangement of any preceding claim, configured to establish a group- related service page or a plurality of pages (401) including at least one element selected from the group consisting of: feed (402a), gallery (402b), forum (402c), data content library (402d), live chat (402e), calendar (402f), group description (404j), welcome note or other informative comment element (404h), members extract (404i), group logo or symbol, and members list (402g).

20. The arrangement of any preceding claim, wherein at least part of the visually distinguishable object is associated with a color further indicative of the number of members the associated group has, the activity of the group, or both.

21. A method for a social media service to be performed by an electronic arrangement such as one or more at least functionally connected servers, com- prising:

-receiving service-related user input data including data relative to a plurality of users and data relative to a plurality of topics (806), -determining, based on the user input,

-a number of groups, wherein each group relates to a predetermined topic of said plurality of topics and contains a number of users of said plurality of users as members (808),

-the number of members per each said group (810), and

-the activity of each said group according to one or more predetermined activity criteria (812),

-defining at least a portion of the UI of the service (814), wherein each group is represented as a visually distinguishable object, preferably a bubble or oth- er circular or rounded shape, positioned in a user-navigable at least two- dimensional space, and wherein the size of the object indicates the determined number of members and the determined activity of the associated group, and wherein the distance between objects optionally indicates the similarity between the associated groups in terms of users and/or content thereof, and

-transmitting service-related output data including UI data indicative of the UI towards a terminal device of a service user (816).

22. A computer program comprising code means adapted, when executed on a computer, to execute the method items of claim 21.

23. A carrier medium, such as an optical disc, memory card or other storage medium, comprising the computer program of claim 22.