WO2015019361A1

WO2015019361A1 - A system and a method to retreive information of second degree network by utilizing first degree network

Info

Publication number: WO2015019361A1
Application number: PCT/IN2014/000411
Authority: WO
Inventors: Gaurav Dalal
Original assignee: Gaurav Dalal
Priority date: 2013-08-07
Filing date: 2014-06-20
Publication date: 2015-02-12

Abstract

Embodiments of present invention provide a mobile application utilizing first degree network of a user to fetch information related to second degree network of the user. The application, residing on a device of a user, fetches a set of first degree contacts having access to required second degree contacts by the user. The user submits a query and the application determines second degree contacts corresponding to the user's query. Thereafter, the first degree contacts corresponding to matched second degree contacts are returned on client device. In this way, the application indicates a set of first degree contacts that have access to further necessary contacts required by the user, and fetched out from the already existing contacts in the user's phonebook. Hence, the application reduces time of searching such first degree contact by manually communicating each contact saved in the phonebook. Therefore, the application is efficient and cost effective.

Description

A SYSTEM AND A METHOD TO RETREIVE INFORMATION OF SECOND DEGREE

NETWORK BY UTILIZING FIRST DEGREE NETWORK

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention is generally related to retrieving and presenting contacts in a social network platform. More specifically, the present invention relates to retrieving information with regard to second degree contacts in a network of first degree contacts saved in a phonebook of a smart-phone.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION A social networking service is a web-based application that enables users to establish links or connections with persons for a purpose of sharing information with one another. Some computer or web-based applications enable the users to form a network with friends and family to communicate with one another, while others are specifically directed to business users with a goal of enabling sharing of business information. With many computer enabled or web enabled applications, the users may connect to each other and share information. For example, users of business networking services typically request and view other users' profile pages, which typically contain biographical information (e.g., contact information, educational background, past and present employment status, and so forth) about the respective users.

A patent application numbered WO2011005712 discloses methods and systems to present network notifications in conjunction with display advertisements. The said patent application describes a mechanism for displaying in conjunction with a display advertisement one or more social network notifications or business network notifications generated from an online or web- based social/business networking service. The social/business network notifications displayed to a particular user generally include content that is associated with persons to whom the particular user is connected via a person-to-person connection established via the social/business networking service, and content that has some nexus to the display advertisement. In some instances, the network notification may relate to an interaction that a user has had with one or more services provided by the business or social networking service. Further, a patent application US 20130012271 Al discloses a mobile terminal displaying an instant message and a control method of the same. A mobile terminal according to an aspect of the invention may include: a wireless communication unit sending or receiving an instant message; a display unit including a first region and a second region and displaying the instant message sent or received by the wireless communication unit on the first region; and a controller displaying information corresponding to at least one object included in the instant message on the second region.

Moreover, each of the present web based applications requires signing in for the services and authentication from their respective network to send and receive networking request. Therefore, the user needs to create a fresh network of people on these web based applications to connect and receive notifications. Hence, the user may not able to make use of the existing contacts stored in his contact list of his mobile phone and rather may have to start all over again to create a network of people. Further, when networking with a contact on any of the present web based social or business networking platforms, the user needs to send a request to the said contact on his or her specific id [typically an email id] created or authenticated for the web based networking platform. Therefore, even if the said contact already exists or is stored in phonebook of the user's mobile phone, the user is not able to utilize this phonebook connection and has to send a separate request on the web based social/business network applications. Hence, this may make the networking more complex and time taking.

However, no such retrieval of information or notification from directly linked contacts, or in other words say, first degree contacts is possible. Hence, the prior arts do not disclose a method or a system either in the form of a web-based application or smartphone application, where the said method/system or application uses or networks the contacts saved in an address book or a phonebook of a mobile phone to retrieve information related to second degree contacts of the saved contacts based on the contacts mobile number.

Further, when a user needs to search for a desired contact, he may at first and at the quickest, search his phonebook stored in his mobile phone. He may do so by searching and contacting through names of the contacts directly stored in the phonebook. Doing so he might miss some of the other relevant contacts who might be useful to the user. Moreover, if the user starts contacting every person in his phonebook, the process may become time taking, tiring and complex.

Hence, no such searching tool have been disclosed in the prior arts that may make use of the contacts stored in phonebooks of the users, and search in third parties' phonebooks to return a desired contact by the user, making the process easy and quick for the users.

Furthermore, the present web based social/business networking applications may retrieve notifications or information of people/services around the world, since these applications crawl data globally on web. Therefore, most of the times, the notifications returned may not be apt and useful for a particular user, since the user's may wish to have people/services which are quickly and easily accessible to fulfill their needs.

Further, there does not exist a mobile application, which may create an ecosystem of phonebook contacts stored in mobile phones of users and help a user in searching a contact in the said ecosystem. Hence, the prior arts lack a search tool, which is based on the phonebook contacts stored in the mobile phones of the users, and help in retrieving contacts information from the said ecosystem required by the users.

Therefore, there exists a need to develop such searching mobile application that may help a user to find relevant contacts easily and quickly.

Also, there exists a need to eliminate and solve the above limitations or the problems by allowing the user to send and receive a network notification with regard to second degree contacts from his already available contacts stored in his phone address book.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION Therefore, an objective of the present invention is to develop a mobile application that may make use of contacts stored in phonebooks of users and search for a desired contact by a user within an ecosystem of contacts. A further objective of the present invention is to provide a method to send and retrieve notification with regard to one or more of second degree contacts available in address book of one or more of first degree contacts, whose details are stored in address book of a user's smart- phone.

Another objective of the invention is to provide a system to send and retrieve notification with regard to one or more of the second degree contacts available in address book of one or more of first degree contacts, whose details are stored in address book of a user's smart-phone.

Yet another objective of the invention is to provide a mobile application allowing a user to send and receive notification, based on skill-set, with regard to 2nd degree contact available in address book of one or more of 1st degree contact, whose details are stored hi address book of a user's smart-phone.

Another objective of the present invention is to provide a mobile application that may easily, efficiently and quickly provide a useful contact to a user by searching through the entire phonebook of the said user and further entire phonebooks related to the contacts of the said user

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary environment that may facilitate related or similar mobile applications in accordance with various embodiments of the invention; FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary environment involving communication between a server, such as the server 108, and the client device, such as the device 104, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 3 illustrates a network of users, such as the user 102 of the application 208, interconnected with each other in a database, such as the contact relation database 114, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; FIG. 4 illustrates a flowchart of a method for relxirning required first degree contacts to a user, such as the user 102, of a mobile application, such as the application 208, to his mobile device, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; and FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart of a method for providing ratings to service provided by required contacts corresponding to a user's query, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

This patent describes the subject matter for patenting with specificity to meet statutory requirements. However, the description itself is not intended to limit the scope of this patent. The principles described herein may be embodied in many different forms.

Illustrative embodiments of the invention now will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which some, but not all embodiments of the invention are shown. Indeed, the invention may be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will satisfy applicable legal requirements. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary environment that may facilitate related or similar mobile applications in accordance with various embodiments of the invention. As shown, a system 100 may include a server 108 communicating through a wireless network 106 with one or more client devices 104. In one implementation, the server 108 may incorporate a server application 110. The server application 110 may include necessary online databases and a processor for processing data online. Further, the databases may include people's detailed information and contacts, information related to service providers and the like.

The system 100 may include any number of client devices 104 that may be connected to the server 108 via the network 106. For example, in one embodiment, the system 100 can be the World Wide Web, including numerous mobile phones, PCs, servers and other computing devices spread throughout the world. Herein, a user 102 may submit a query for retrieving results corresponding to keywords in the query. The user 102 may submit the query through a client device 104 that may be coupled to a wireless communication network 106. The client device 104 may be a smart mobile phone capable of downloading and running mobile applications, such as an application 208, and capable of connecting to the server application 110 via wireless tele-communication network 106 using standard TCP/IP protocol. Further, the communication network 106 (hereinafter referred to sis 'network') may include, but is not restricted to, Internet, PSTN, Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), and Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). Further, the server 108 may reside a server application 110, which may have online databases. The server application 110 may include a people database 112 and a contact relation database 114. The people database 112 may store information related to people/service providers. The server application 110 may collect information contributed by the users 102 by downloading the mobile application 208 on their client devices 104. Further, the application 208 may set permissions that are granted by a user 102 for allowing the application 208 to fetch contact details from his respective phonebook 206 saved in the client device 104. Hence, whenever a user 102 downloads and installs the mobile application 208 on his client device 104, the application 208 may fetch contact information stored in a phonebook 206 of the client device's 104 memory, based on the permissions. In this way, the application 208 may not breach the privacy of the users 102. Therefore, the people database 112 may include contacts of individual persons and/or service providers. Hereinafter, a contact may be exchangeably used to refer as a contact of an individual person or a service provider.

The people database 112 may store information related to people/service providers, where the information may include and is not restricted to names, unique mobile phone numbers, other contacting phone numbers, addresses, profile, pictures, online contacts of the respective person, phonebook contacts of the respective person, location and the like. Hence, the mobile application 208 may look up into the people database 112 to fetch contact details of required people/service providers and return them to the user 102.

Further, the server application 110 may reside a contact relation database 114. In this database, the server application 110 may predict a way a user 102 saves contact information that is related to the business identity or relationship of the contact with the user 102. Further, the server application 110 may store the relations among the contacts stored in the people database 112, by utilizing the information fetched by server application 110 from the phonebooks of the users. The contact relation database 114 may show, for a respective user, his directly linked contacts, as fetched from his phonebook. The contacts that are directly linked to a user 102 may be referred to as 'first degree contacts'. Further, the contacts that are directly linked to the first degree contacts of the user 102 may be referred to as 'second degree contacts' in reference with the user 102. Hence, the contact relation database 114 may store the first degree contacts as well as the second degree contacts of the users 102 using the application 208. Conclusively, the contact relation database 114 may appear as a mesh of people, interconnected with each other. The contact relation database 114 may be in a tabular form, or may be in a three dimensional space.

The user 102 may submit a query, wherein the term "query" may refer to a collection of keywords or phrases being submitted by the user 102 on account of which results may be retrieved. The query may be submitted at the client device 104, where the client device 104 may have the proposed mobile application 208 downloaded and installed. Further, the client device 104 may also have a phonebook 206 stored in its memory 202. The phonebook 206 may have a list of contacts of the user 102 that are accessible by the user 102. The contacts may include contact details of people (personal and professional) and service providers, such as restaurants, schools, agencies, and the like. Further, the contacts saved in the phonebook 206 of the client device 104 may be referred to as 'first degree contacts' since these contacts are directly linked and accessible by the user. The first degree contacts of the user 102 may form an eco-system for the user 102. Therefore, an eco-system may be defined as total number of reachable contacts within first degree contacts of the user 102. The phonebook 206 may be described further in conjunction with Fig. 2.

Using the mobile application's 208 user interface, the user 102 may submit a query corresponding to which he may wish to obtain results. As soon as the user 102 submits the query, the application 208 may run algorithms to return a set of first degree contacts corresponding to the query and potentially useful to the user 102. In an embodiment, the user 102 may utilize the application 208 to obtain a set of first degree contact from his phonebook 206, where the set of the first degree contacts may be found out to have links/contacts corresponding to the user's query and hence are useful to the user 102.

In an embodiment, on submission of the query, the application 208 may communicate over the network 106 with the online databases residing on server 108. Analyzing the keywords contained in the query, the application 208 may start searching through the first degree contacts of the user 102 for retrieving those contacts which may be potentially linked with the query. In other words, on submission of the query, the application 208 may return a resultant set of first degree contacts fetched out from the phonebook 206 of the user 102, where the resultant set of the first degree contacts may be found to have potential contacts matching with the query. For the application 208 to perform its objective, the application 208 may run searching algorithms using a searching module 220 over the second degree contacts related to the user 102, executed on the server application 110. Running these searching algorithms, the application 208 may scan through the second degree contacts in the contact relation database 114 and obtain matching set of second degree contacts corresponding to the user's query from the relation database 114.

Thereafter, obtaining matched second degree contacts, the application 208 may fetch a resultant set of first degree contacts linked to the user 102 and corresponding to the matched set of second degree contacts, from the contact relation database 114 with a unique matching algorithm based on the way the user 102 saved the contact information in the phonebook: Further, the application 208 may return contact details of the resultant set of first degree contacts from the people database to the client devices, from where the contacts are accessible by the user 102.

For an instance, if a user 'A' needs to find contacts of a 'heart surgeon', he may enter the query containing the keywords 'heart surgeon' on the user interface of the application 208 in his mobile phone. Thereafter, the application 208 may run searching algorithms over the second degree contacts stored in the contact relation database 114. Further, the application 208 returns that set of first degree contacts where the application 208 was able to map the keywords 'heart surgeon' in the second degree contacts for the respective user Ά'. In other words, the application 208 will return a set of first degree contacts fetched from the user 'A's phonebook, which are found to have access to 'heart surgeon' and have contacts in their respective phonebooks. Hence, the application 208 indicates a list of contacts directly linked with the user A having access to a heart surgeon.

Further, the application 208 may also maintain a user log history 214. The user log history 214 may store the user's previously selected people/service providers to analyze user's preferences. Further, the application 208 may utilize the user log history 214 to return a potential set of results, which are more likely to be selected by the users, since the set of results may be corresponding to the users' log. The user's log history 214 may be explained further in conjunction with Fig. 2. In another embodiment, on the submission of a query, the application 208 may first compute a user's intent corresponding to the query by utilizing a user intent module 210. The user's intent may be calculated by taking into consideration factors such as user's location, previously contacted people/service providers, preferences, user's log and the like. Thereafter computing the user's intent, the application 208 may combine the user's intent with the user's log and pass it over the network 106 to the server application 110 for finding out contacts useful for the user 102. It may be appreciated by a person skilled in the art, that there are many methods used in present to compute the user's intent which are used by present web based searching tools.

Conclusively, the application 208 may return to a user 102 a resultant set of his first degree contacts, which may be found out to be linked with the query entered by the user 102 on his device 104. Further, in an embodiment, the application 208 may also show a number of useful links/contacts possessed by each contact in the resultant set of first degree contacts and which may correspond to the query. These contacts may be the second degree contacts for the user 102.

Further, in an embodiment of the invention, the application 208 may allow a user 102 to assign one or more of his first degree contacts as 'trusted contacts', where the user 102 may further grant permissions to these 'trusted contacts' to access his respective updated entire phonebook 206. Utilizing this feature of the application 208, if a first user is assigned as a 'trusted contact' by a second user, then the first user 102, after receiving a set of first degree contacts corresponding to the query, may now access the respective phonebook 206 of the second user if the second user is contained in the set. Advantageously, now the first user may utilize the phonebook contacts of the second user, which are the second degree contacts for the first user, for searching the required query results.

In another embodiment of the invention, the users, after experiencing the required services provided by people/service providers, may provide ratings to them based on the quality and kind of services. In an embodiment, the people database 112 may also store the ratings provided to each person service provider. Hence, the application 208 may fetch these rating from the people database 112 and show the ratings too when returning a set of results to the user 102.

In a further embodiment of the invention, the application 208 may allow the user 102 to back up the contacts of his phonebook 206 in an online database (which may also be the people database) and restore the contacts from this database, whenever required.

In another embodiment of the invention, the application 208 may also help the user 102 in finding common friends within his ecosystem. This may be done by utilizing the information and relational details stored in the contact relation database 114. In yet another embodiment, the application 208 may allow the user 208 to find contact details of service providers, such as restaurants, hospitals, hotels, and the like, with in his ecosystem in the similar way, as the application 208 may find for people.

In an embodiment, the application 208 may provide a provision to every user of the application 208 to advertise for his services within and outside his ecosystem. In this way, a user's services may also be advertised outside his ecosystem. Advantageously, a user may expand his targeted market. Additionally, the application 208 may advertise the services based on a user's intent and locations. For an instance, if a user may need a contact of a cook within his location, then he may receive notifications/ advertisements of cooks who lie within his accessible area of location.

Further, in an embodiment, the application 208 may allow a user 102 to send a request corresponding to his query to all the contacts within his ecosystem. Thereafter, the potential contacts in the ecosystem may have an option to return the request by sending business cards to the user 102 corresponding to the query. For an instance, a user ABC sends a request of a 'lawyer' within his ecosystem, then the subsequent contacts in the ecosystem of the user ABC may response to the query 'lawyer' by sending business cards of the lawyers, which they possess within their respective ecosystems.

In another embodiment, the application 208 may also allow a user 102 to create groups or business pages within their ecosystem, in order to expand the network related to their services.

In an embodiment, the application 208 may allow a service provider to register is his services. By doing so, the application 208 may store his contact details in the people database. This may help the registered service to appear in search results for a user.

FIG. 2 illustrates an exemplary environment involving communication between a server, such as the server 108, and the client device, such as the device 104, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. A user 102 may possess a client device 104, which may be able to communicate with a server application 110 residing on the server 108 over a wireless tele-communicating network 106. Further, the client device 104 may be able to download and run a mobile application 208. In an embodiment, the client device 104 may be a mobile phone able to download and run the application 208 and have an access to the server over a wireless telecommunicating network, such as a smart phone.

The client device 104 may have a phonebook 206 related to the user 102 stored in its memory 202. The phonebook 206 may store personal and professional contacts related to the user 102. Further, the phonebook 206 may also store the contacts of the service providers, such as hotels, cafe\ bars, schools, and the like required by the user 102. Furthermore, the phonebook 206 may store information related to these contacts, where the information may include and is not restricted to names, mobile phone numbers, other phone numbers, addresses, profile, pictures, and the like. The contacts stored in the phonebook 206 of the user 102 may be referred to as the first degree contacts of the user 102. Further, total number of reachable contacts within the phonebook of the user 102 may be referred as an 'ecosystem' related to the user 102. Conclusively, the phonebook 206 of the client device 104 may include contacts of people (personal and professional contacts) and service providers, for example for restaurants, hotels, agencies and the like. Further, as mentioned above, the client device 104 may be able to download and run the application 208. Therefore, the mobile application 208 will be stored in the memory 202 of the client device 104, after being downloaded. The application 208 may help the user 102 to retrieve a resultant set of first degree contacts corresponding to a query entered by the user 102. The resultant set may indicate a number of first degree contacts who may be able to provide contacts or information to the user 102 related to user's query. In this way, the application 208 may be able to provide the user 102 more contacts that he requires, besides his own phonebook 206 and hence help in expanding his network. Furthermore, the client device 104 may also maintain a user log history 214. The user log history 214 may store previously selected contacts by the user 102, corresponding to different queries raised by the user 102. Storing the previous selections of the users may help in analyzing user's preferences respective to every query raised by him earlier. Further, the application 208 may utilize the user log history 214 to return a potential set of results, which are more likely to be selected by the users, since the set of results may be corresponding to the users' log.

The client device 104 may be able to run the application 208 with the help of certain modules. The client device 104 may include a query intent module 210 and an information retrieval module 212. The user 102 may submit a query on the user interface of the application 208. The query intent module 210 may be utilized by the application 208 to compute the intent of the user 208 behind the query. A person skilled in the art that there exist many methods used to calculate the user's intent in a query, which are used by present web based searching tools may appreciate it.

Further, the application 208 may receive contributions to the people database 112 from the various users downloading the application 208. The application 208 may put permissions, where a user may allow the application 208 to fetch his respective phonebook details. In this way, a user may restrict the application 208 from taking his contact details on his wish.

Therefore, the application 208 may fetch the contacts from the phonebooks of the users, based on their permissions, and store them in the people database 112. In this way, the users may also contribute in expanding the people database. .Furthermore, the server application 110 using a computing module 222 may calculate the relations between different users using the application 208 globally by a computing algorithm and store the contact relations in the contact relation database 114. Hence, the contact relation database 114 may show first and second degree contact relations for a particular user. Therefore, the contact relation database 114 may store a mesh of different users of the application 208 interconnected with each other. The application 208 may use these contact relations in order to match the query onto the second degree contacts related to the first degree contacts of a particular user, since the relation database 114 may easily show second degree contacts of the user. Hence, required first degree contacts may be found out from the relation database 114.

In an embodiment, on submission of a query by the user 102, the application 208 may compute the intent of the user 102 using the query intent module 210. Further, the application 208 may start scanning through the respective second degree contacts of the user 102 to obtain resultant set of first degree contacts within the ecosystem of the user 102 that may correspond to the user's query intent. In an embodiment, the application 208 may first combine the user's intent with the user log history 214 and then start searching through the second degree contacts, in order to get results aligned with the user's preferences. Therefore, executing at the server, the application 208 may search through the second degree contacts linked with the user 102 in the contact relation database 114, using a searching module 220, in order to find out those second degree contacts matching the user's intent. Further, the application 208 may find a resultant set of first degree contacts corresponding to the matched second degree contacts. Hence, the resultant first degree contacts may be found to have second degree contacts (in reference with the user 102) corresponding to the user's query.

Thereafter, when the resultant set of first degree contacts may be found out, the application 208 may then fetch the contact details corresponding to each contact in the resultant set of first degree, from the people database 112. Resultantly, the application 208 may return this resultant set of first degree with their contact details to the user 102 on his device 104, using information retrieval module 212. In an embodiment, the application 208 may also show a number of required second degree contacts linked with each first degree contact contained in the resultant set, along with their contact details. In this way, the user 102 may be able to find contacts in his network by utilizing his first degree contacts stored in his phonebook 206, and thereby expand his network also.

For an instance, if a user ABC needs to find contacts of a 'teacher', he enters a query containing a keyword 'teacher' in his application 208. The application 208 may calculate the intent of the query. Thereafter, the application 208 may search through the first degree contacts of the user ABC, in the contact relation database 114 using the searching module 220, in order to fetch those contacts from the first degree contacts who may have access to a 'teacher' and have saved contacts in their respective phonebooks (which will be second degree contacts for the user ABC). Hence, the application 208 matches the keyword 'teacher' in the second degree contacts of the user ABC, and returns corresponding first degree contacts to the user ABC.

In an embodiment of the invention, after experiencing services of a contact (person/service provider), the user 102 may provide ratings to the contact based on the quality and kind of service provided by the contact. The application 208 may allow the user 102 to rate the services by asking them to rate, using a rating module 224. In an embodiment, the application 208 may store the ratings in the people database 112 corresponding to each contact.

Conclusively, the application 208 may be able to return a set of first degree contacts from the ecosystem of a user 102, where the set of first degree contacts may be found to be potentially linked with the user's query. In this way, the user 102 may be able to find more contacts using his already stored phonebook 206.

FIG, 3 illustrates a network of users, such as the user 102 of the application 208, interconnected with each other in a database, such as the contact relation database 114, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. As shown in the figure 3, a user 302 may have 'n' number of first degree contacts, which may be stored in his phonebook 206. One of the first degree contacts of the user 302 may be 302a, as shown in the fig. 3. Further, the user 302a may also have his respective first degree contacts, 302b, which may be stored in his respective phonebook on his mobile phone. The first degree contacts 302b of the user 302a are the second degree contacts for the user 302. Hence, the users 302 and 302b are related and connected to each other via a user 302a. This mesh network may be as large as the number of users using the application 208. Therefore, the contact relation database 114 may show these types of contact relations between different users using the application 208, identifying the first and second degree contacts for each user. FIG. 4 illustrates a flowchart of a method for returning required first degree contacts to a user, such as the user 102, of a mobile application, such as the application 208, to his mobile device, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. A user 102 may possess a client device 104, which may be able to connect to a wireless tele-communicating network. Further, the client device 104 may be able to download and run an application 208. In an embodiment, the client device 104 may be a smart phone. Furthermore, the client device 104 may store a phonebook 206 in its memory 202, where the phonebook 206 may contain contacts of people/service providers required by the user 102. The contacts stored in the phonebook 206 may be referred to as first degree contacts of the user 102. Further, the first degree contacts of the user 102 may form an ecosystem, where the ecosystem maybe referred to as total number of reachable contacts within the first degree contacts. Furthermore, the phonebook 206 of the user 102 may include contacts of the people (personal and professional) and service providers, such as restaurants, bars, shops, and the like. In an embodiment, the phonebook 206 may also include details such as addresses, email ids, pictures and the like corresponding to the contacts contained in the phonebook 206.

There may be instances when the user 102 may require contact(s) of a person(s) that he may wish to contact for availing a required service. Therefore, the user 102 may utilize the application 208 in such instances, which may be downloaded on the client device 104, to obtain a required number of first degree contacts who may have access to such person(s) required by the user 102. Therefore, at step 402, the user 102 may submit a query describing his intent of search, on user interface of the application 208. On submission of the query by the user 102, at step 404, the application 208 may compute user's intent behind the submitted query, using query intent module 210. In an embodiment, the application 208 may combine the user's intent computed at the step 404 with the user's log history 214 to generate a user's preference corresponding to his intent. Thereafter, at step 406, the application 208 may scan through second degree contacts of the user 102, executed at the server 108, where the second degree contacts related to the user 102 may be stored in an online database known as contact relation database 114. While scanning through second degree contacts, the application 208 may utilize a searching module 220 residing over the server 108, in order to fetch required set of second degree contacts that may match the query intent of the user 102, from the contact relation database 114. At step 408, the application 208 may find out corresponding set of first degree users respective to the set of second degree contacts fetched at the step 406 from the contact relation database 114. Hence, utilizing the contact relations, stored in the contact relation database 114, between the users of the application 208, the application 208 may be able to fetch the resultant set of first degree contacts at the step 408. Thereafter, at step 410, the application 208 may obtain contact details of the resultant set of first degree contacts from people database 112. Resultantly, at step 412, the application 208 may retrieve the resultant set of first degree contact using information retrieval module 212 at the client device 104 and displays the resultant set to the user 102, along with their contact information.

In an embodiment, the application 208 may also return a number of second degree contacts that may be linked to each first degree contact of the resultant set, along with their contact details. For an instance, if the application 208 returns XYZ, as the first degree contact to a user ABC and displays a number '4', as the number of second degree contacts, along with the contact information of XYZ, then this means that the first degree contact XYZ of the user ABC has access to 4 further contacts which may be required by the user ABC. In an embodiment, the application 208 may allow the user 102 to grant permissions to his first degree contacts stored in the phonebook 206, whom he may wish, for accessing his entire updated phonebook 206. The contacts to which the user 102 may grant such permissions may be termed as 'trusted contacts'. Due to this feature of the application, a user of the application 208 may have access to second degree contacts as well, but for only those the user is a 'trusted contact'. In this case, while retrieving the resultant set of first degree contacts, such user may also receive contact details of the required second degree contacts, for those first degree contacts for which the user may be assigned as a trusted contact.

In an embodiment, after receiving a service from a person/service provider, the user 102 may provide ratings to the person/service provider based on the quality of service. The application may allow a user 102 to rate the services, by utilizing the rating module 224. The method of rating is described in details further in Fig. 5.

Utilizing the method described in the FIG. 4, the user 102 may also obtain contact for service providers, such as restaurants, bars, hotels, and the like, in a similar manner as the application 208 does for people contacts.

In an embodiment of the invention, the user 102 may find out contacts of people/service providers that may lie within his area of location. The application 208, when computing the user's intent in a query submitted by the user 102, may also take into consideration the user's location details, and returns a list of first degree contacts that may have access to required contacts within the location of the user 102.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart of a method for providing ratings to service provided by required contacts corresponding to a user's query, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. Upon requirement of contacts for people/service provider, a user 102 may submit a query on his client device 104 using the application 208, at step 502. At step 504, the application 208 may further searches through the second degree contacts of the user 102 using a searching module 220 and obtains a set of second degree contacts matching the respective user's query from a contact relation database 114. Thereafter, at step 506, the application 208 may determine a resultant set of first degree contacts from the contact relation database 114, corresponding to the set of second degree contacts obtained at the step 504. Further, at step 508, the application 208 may retrieve the contact details of each contact contained in the resultant set of first degree contacts from people database 112 and displays the resultant set to the user 102 at his client device 104.

In an embodiment of the invention, the application 208 may allow the user 102 to grant permissions to first degree contacts that the user may wish for accessing the user's 102 entire phonebook 206. These contacts may be referred to as 'trusted contacts' of the user 102. In the same way, the user 102 may be a trusted contact for one or more of his first degree contacts. Therefore, at step 510, the user 102 may access phonebooks of those one or more of the resultant set of first degree contacts for which the user 102 may be assigned as a trusted contact. Hence, the user 102 may find out required contact details in the phonebooks of the resultant first degree contacts. Thereafter, experiencing the services provided by the required contacts, the user 102 may provide ratings to the contacts based on the quality of service, at step 512. Further, in another embodiment, after receiving the resultant set of first degree contacts that may be considered to be linked with the user's query, the user 102 may directly communicate with each contact of the resultant set using the client device 104 to obtain details of required contacts. Thereafter, receiving the contact details of people/service provider that the user intended in his query and experiencing the services provided by these people/service provider, the application 208 at step 512 may allow the user 102 to provide ratings to the services based on the quality of services, utilizing rating module 224. In an embodiment, the application 208 may store these ratings in the people database 112 respective to each contact and show them when returning the contact details to the user.

Advantageously, the present invention may disclose a mobile application that may provide a user to utilize contacts already existing in the user's phonebook in order to find and make further contacts and expand the user's network. In this way, a user may not be restricted to his first degree contacts, whereas the user may utilize the direct contacts saved in his phone book (first degree contacts) to communicate and start networking beyond the first degree contacts saved in his phonebook. Further, the present invention may provide a mobile application that may be less complex and reduces time that may be involved while searching for potential contacts in a phonebook that may further prove to have access and contacts of required important people/service providers, which may be useful for a user of the phonebook.

Further, the present invention may obviate the need of starting a fresh network for expanding one's personal and professional network, instead the present invention may utilize the contacts already existing in the phonebook of the user. Furthermore, the present mobile application may allow the users to have access to respective phonebooks of their first degree contacts, when the users have been assigned as trusted contacts. This may lessen the search time for a service and may make the searching for a required service quick and easy. Additionally, the mobile application may return a set of contacts that lie within the area of location of a user. Hence, the contacts that may be easily approached by the user are retrieved. Furthermore, the mobile application may also allow users to advertise their services outside their ecosystems, and the application may target the advertisements to users' profiles by matching various factors such as user's locations, preferences and the like. Further, the present invention may also allow the users to make their own business groups/pages within their ecosystems. Also, the mobile application may show common contacts within an ecosystem of a user.

Since other modifications and changes varied to fit particular operating requirements and environments are apparent to those skilled in the art, the invention is not considered limited to the example chosen for purposes of disclosure, and covers all changes and modifications which do not constitute departures from the true spirit and scope of this invention.

Having thus described the invention, what is desired to be protected by Letters Patent is presented in the subsequently appended claims.

Although the invention has been explained in relation to its preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that many other possible modifications and variations can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as herein described.

As one of ordinary skill in the art may appreciate, the example system and method described herein can be modified. For example, certain steps can be omitted, certain steps can be carried out concurrently, and other steps can be added. Although particular embodiments of the invention have been described in detail, it is understood that the invention is not limited correspondingly in scope, but includes all changes, modifications and equivalents coming within the spirit and terms of the claims appended hereto.

While the invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and various embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to the disclosed embodiments, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modifications and equivalent arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. This written description uses examples to disclose the invention, including the best mode, and also to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the invention, including making and using any devices or systems and performing any incorporated methods. The patentable scope the invention is defined in the claims, and may include other examples that occur to those skilled in the art. Such other examples are intended to be within the scope of the claims if they have structural elements that do not differ from the literal language of the claims, or if they include equivalent structural elements with insubstantial differences from the literal languages of the claims.

Claims

I claim:

(1) A system to send and retrieve notification with regard to one or more second degree contacts of a user on a client device communicating with a server over a network, the system comprising:

a server application where the server application includes a people database and a contact relation database;

a client device of a user communicating with the server application over a wireless tele-communicating network (telecom); and

an application residing on the client device fetching a set of first degree contacts which are linked to required second degree contacts corresponding to the user.

(2) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server application includes a people database storing information related to people and/or service providers, where the information includes names, unique mobile phone numbers, other contacting phone numbers, addresses, profile pictures, online contacts of the respective person, phonebook contacts of the respective person and the like information.

(3) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server application predicts the way a user saves contact information which is related to the business identity or relationship of the contact with the user.

(4) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server application includes a contact's relational database storing the relations among the contacts stored in the people database, storing the first and second degree contacts corresponding to a user.

(5) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server application includes a searching module to scan through the second degree contacts corresponding to a query entered by the user on the client device executed on the server application, and further to ¹ scan through the first degree contacts matching the second degree contacts with a unique matching algorithm based on the way the user saved the contact information in the contact info.

(6) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server application further includes a computing algorithm to calculate relations between the contacts stored in the people database; and further also includes a rating module to allow the user to rate a person/service provider based on their services.

(7) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the client device includes a phonebook storing first degree contacts corresponding to the user; and user log history storing user's preferences in the service providers.

(8) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the client device includes an information retrieval module to retrieve information related to the required first degree contacts to the user on the client device.

(9) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the application residing on the client device allows the user to assign one or more of his first degree contacts as 'trusted contacts', where the user further grants permissions to these 'trusted contacts' to access his respective updated entire phonebook.

(10) The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the client device is a smart phone capable to connect to the server application via wireless tele-communication network using standard TCP IP protocol.

(11) A method to send and retrieve notification corresponding to one or more second degree contacts of a user on a client device communicating with a server application over a network, the method comprising:

submitting of a query by the user on the client device to the server application;

2 computing user's intent of the submitted query by an application residing on the client device using query intent module;

scanning through the second degree contacts of the user, stored in a contact relation database residing on the server application, by the application to find out a set of second degree contacts corresponding to the user's query;

searching and fetching a resultant set of first degree contacts corresponding to the set of second degree contacts by the application;

obtaining contact information of the resultant set of first degree contacts from a people database, residing on the server application, by the application; and retrieving and displaying the resultant set of first degree contacts along with their contact information by the application on the client device.

(12) The method as claimed in claim 11, further comprises, accessing phonebooks of the resultant set of first degree contacts by the user to find out required contacts corresponding to the query (authorized explicitly by the user); and providing ratings to the required contacts after experiencing their services by the user.

(13) The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the client device is a smart phone capable to connect to the server application via wireless tele-communication network using standard TCP/TP protocol.

(14) The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the server application includes a people database and a contact relation database.

(15) The method as claimed in claim 14, wherein the people database stores information related to people and/or service providers, where the information includes names, unique mobile phone numbers, other contacting phone numbers, addresses, profile, pictures, online contacts of the respective person, phonebook contacts of the respective person and the like information.

(16) The method as claimed in claim 14, wherein the contact relation database stores the relations among the contacts stored in the people database, storing the first and second degree contacts corresponding to a user.

(17) The method as claimed in claim 14, wherein the server application includes a searching module to scan through the second degree contacts corresponding to a query entered by the user on the client device, and further to scan through the first degree contacts matching the second degree contacts.

(18) The method as claimed in claim 14, wherein the server application further includes a computing module to compute relations between the contacts stored in the people database; and also includes a rating module to allow the user to rate a person/service provider based on their services.

(19) The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the client device includes a phonebook storing first degree contacts corresponding to the user; and user log history storing user's preferences in the service providers.

(20) The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the client device includes an information retrieval module to retrieve information related to the required first degree contacts to the user on the client device.

(21) The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the application residing on the client device allows the user to assign one or more of his first degree contacts as 'trusted contacts', where the user further grants permissions to these 'trusted contacts' to access his respective updated entire phonebook.

(22) An application residing on a client device of a user to send and retrieve notification corresponding to one or more second degree contacts of a user on the client device communicating with a server application over a communicating network, the application comprises: a user interface for the user to enter a query;

a query intent module residing on the client device to calculate the intent of the user behind the submitted query;

an information retrieval module residing on the client device to retrieve first degree contacts to the user from a people database on a server application, by searching and matching query intent on second degree contacts stored in a contact relation database on the server application and retrieving and displaying the corresponding first degree contacts to the user on the client device.

(23) The application as claimed in claim 22, allows the user to assign one or more of his first degree contacts as 'trusted contacts', where the user further grants permissions to these 'trusted contacts' to access his respective updated entire phonebook.

(24) The application as claimed in claim 22 may also use a user log history on the client device, where the user log history stores the previous selections done by the user.

(25) The application as claimed in claim 21 resides on a client device, where the client device may be a smart phone.

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