WO2001018693A2

WO2001018693A2 - Internet message board forwarding system

Info

Publication number: WO2001018693A2
Application number: PCT/US2000/024792
Authority: WO
Inventors: Steven P. Campbell; Douglas W. Muise; Tracy Cohen; Melinda A. Cuthbert; Julie A. Chiron
Original assignee: Shoptok, Inc.
Priority date: 1999-09-09
Filing date: 2000-09-08
Publication date: 2001-03-15
Also published as: WO2001018693A3; AU7477000A

Abstract

An Internet message board system includes a host site that hosts multiple message boards. The host site maintains statistics about an Internet user and processes the statistics to determine preferences of the Internet user and to suggest a message board that corresponds to the preferences of the Internet user. The Internet message board system can forward an Internet user from a first message board associated with a first website to a second message board associated with a second website. The processed user statistics include indicators such as profile and demographic information about the Internet user. Other processed user statistics are indicators associated with message boards in which the Internet user has participated, for example by reading or posting messages. To identify a message board that corresponds to the preferences of the Internet user, the user statistics are compared with indicators of the various message boards. The message board indicators include indicators that suggest a content of the corresponding message board.

Description

INTERNET MESSAGE BOARD FORWARDING SYSTEM

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

This invention relates to the field of communications boards. In particular, the invention relates to hosting message boards. Description of the Related Art

Message boards, which existed before the Internet, and Internet message boards allow Internet users to post and read messages, and to search the posted messages. Pre-Intemet message boards, e.g. Usenet, and Internet message boards often fail to monitor the message board activity of the Internet user to predict preferences of the Internet user and then suggest other message boards at other locations or websites which may match the Internet user's preferences and interest the Internet user. In part this lack arises from the difficulty of searching message boards that are hosted by different sites. Many Internet users are also simply accustomed to inefficiently searching through numerous message boards located at many websites in order to discover another message board that will interest the Intrnet user.

Product sites such as Amazon.com automatically suggest books which may interest an Internet user, based on the Internet user's browsing and purchasing patterns. However, these suggestions do not involve message boards, and do not suggest that an Internet user leave the Amazon.com site.

Therefore, it is desirable to have an Internet message board system that monitors the message board activity of an Internet user of a first message board associated with a first website and suggests a second message board associated with a second website.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Various embodiments assign different weights to different user indicators. In one embodiment, an indicator associated with a message board in which the Internet user posted a message is weighted more heavily than an indicator associated with a message board in which the Internet user read a message.

Other embodiments allow website owners to purchase an exclusive right to an indicator.

Some embodiments charge an owner of a first website a first amount for forwarding an Internet user to a community of message boards associated with the first website. Further embodiments refund a portion of the first amount to the owner of the first website each time the Internet user is forwarded from a message board of the community associated with the first website to a message board of another community not associated with the first website. Further embodiments search the messages posted and/or read by the

Internet user to include further data for user indicator statistics.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

Fig. 1 illustrates an Internet messaging system including one embodiment. Fig. 2 illustrates a host site of an Internet messaging system.

Fig. 3 illustrates a process flow of an Internet messaging system. Fig. 4 illustrates an example matrix that ranks message boards to be suggested to an Internet user.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A. System Overview

Figure 1 is a block diagram of an Internet messaging system 100 including one embodiment of the invention. The Internet messaging system 100 forwards an Internet user from a first message board associated with a first website to a second message board associated with a second website.

The Internet 120 connects an Internet user 110, a website A 130, a website B 140, and a website C 150. A website includes one or more computers supporting one or more interlinked web pages residing at the same network location. The Internet user 110 can browse the website A 130, the website B 140, and the website C 150 over the Internet 120. The host site 160 hosts a community A 170, a community B 180, and a community C 190. A host site includes one or more computers performing the actual processing for hosting communities of message boards and responding to Internet-based accesses. While visiting the website A 130, the Internet user 110 can enter the community A 170 through a community A link 135. Examples of the community A link 135 include a community login and/or a clickable link. The message content of community A 170 typically corresponds to the content of the website A 130. The style and feel of the community A 170 correspond to the style and feel of the website A 130. Thus, it is not apparent to the Internet user 110 entering the community A 170 that the Internet user has left the website A 130. Actually, the Internet user 110 using the community A link 135 is sent through the Internet 120 to the host site 160, and enters the community A 170.

Similarly, while visiting the website B 140, the Internet user 110 can enter the community B 180 through a community B link 145.

Similarly, while visiting website C 150, the Internet user 110 can enter community C 190 through a community C link 155. A community, such as the community A 170, the community B 180, or the community C 190, includes several message boards. A message board includes messages organized by topic. The Internet user 110 can create a new message board in a community, post new messages in a message board, and/or read posted messages in a message board. The community A 170 includes a message board 1 172, a message board 2 174, and a message board 3 176. The community B 180 includes a message board 4 182 and a message board 5 184. The Internet messaging system 100 can forward an Internet user 110 between message boards of different communities. For example, an Internet user that has read and/or posted messages in the message board 4 182 of the community B 180 can be presented with a suggestion from the host site 160 to read and/or post messages in the message board 1 172 of the community A 170. If the Internet user 110 declines the suggestion, the Internet user 110 remains within the message board 4 182 of the community B 180. If the Internet user 110 accepts the suggestion, the Internet user is forwarded from the message board 4 182 of the community B to the message board 1 172 of the community A 170. Because the Internet user 110 may experience a change from the style and feel of the website B 140 to the website A 130, it may be apparent to the Internet user 110 that the Internet user 110 has been forwarded from the website B 140 through the Internet 120 and to the website A 130. Actually, the Internet user 110 has remained within the host site 160 and the Internet user has been forwarded from the community B 180 to the community A 170. The change from the style and feel of the community B 180 to the style and feel of community A 170 may give the Internet user 110 the impression that the Internet user 110 has been forwarded from the website B 140 to the website A 130. Figure 2 is a block diagram of an architecture of the host site 160. The host site includes an outer layer 210, middleware 220, databases 230, and a forwarding engine 225 between the middleware 220 and the databases 230. The databases 230 include a user database 232, a message database 234, a site database 236, and an accounting database 238. The outer layer 210 includes one or more programs to implement the interface for Internet users. The outer layer 210 also includes an interface allowing owners of websites to access information and manage their message boards. For example, an owner of the website A 130 can use an interface presented by the outer layer 210 to consult statistics about the community A 170, such as Internet user traffic, indicator statistics, and/or user record information. A website owner is typically a customer of the host site 160 and paying the host site 160 to host a community. For example, the owner of website A is typically a customer of the host site 160 and pays the host site 160 to host community A 170.

The middleware 220 handles user identification, determines site dynamics, determines the time and date, makes sure that the correct style and images for the various communities are displayed, determines a level of user authorization by comparing login information of the Internet user 110, and ensures that only authorized users can invoke appropriate scripts, such as scripts that delete message boards.

The user database 232 includes user records with indicator statistics. The indicators include login information such as a user identifier and a password. The indicators also include profile and demographic information such as a birthday, gender, age bracket, e-mail address, home address, work address, phone numbers, martial status, family status, hobbies, pets, income, occupation, credit history, user payment methods, and/or the particular community where the corresponding Internet user 110 initially registered with the host site 160 to gain login access to the communities and message boards of the host site 160. The indicators further include a history of past accesses to the various boards of the various communities within the host site 160, the indicators associated with messages posted and/or read by the corresponding Internet user 110, and/or the indicators that increment each time the corresponding Internet user 110 enters a website, a community, a message board, and/or topic. The indicators can be used to help identify users interests. For example, an indicator associated with posting a message may be weighted more heavily than an indicator associated with reading a message to reflect a greater interest of an Internet user 110 who posts a message rather than just read a message or just enter a community or message board. The indicators also include the results of mining, e.g., searching, messages posted and/or read by the corresponding Internet user 110. After an Internet user 110 logs into a community, the corresponding user record is read into a random access memory from storage. After the user logs out, indicator statistics and information for the user record are recorded back to storage. Keeping indicator statistics and information for logged in users in memory improves scalability of the host site 160, such that many Internet users may be utilizing the host site 160 without a great decrease in speed to the Internet users.

The message database 234 includes information associated with the message boards, such as the messages, read/write privileges, topics of the messages, and indicators associated with the community, message board and/or topic. A message board may be created by the Internet user, a website owner, and/or the host site 160. When a board is created, indicators can be provided that describe the board. Text boxes or indicator fields may be provided to enter indicators that describe the general thrust of the content of messages which might be posted on the message board, and/or an expected Internet user demographic. Some indicators describing the board may include default indicators of the community and/or the host site 160. A message board may have content that can be described by certain default indicators. The indicators may describe the content of the website corresponding to the community of the message board, e.g., website A 130 corresponds to community A 170. Every board and message that belongs to a message board may automatically have default indicators. In other systems, some subset of boards and/or messages that belong to a message board may automatically have certain default indicators associated with the message board. Alternatively, message boards and messages that are part of a community associated with the website may have those default indicators.

The site database 236 includes exclusive indicators, scrubber and polisher information, facts about the website, contact information, indicator information, and/or information on websites, such as website A 130, website B 140, and website C 150. The owners of the websites are typically customers of the host site 160 and rely on the host site 160 to host the communities and message boards. The information on websites includes style information such as style and feel information, so that the Internet user who enters a community from a website experiences a style and feel similar to the corresponding website. For example, if an Internet user 110 enters the community A 170 through the community A link 135, it may not be apparent to the Internet user 110 that the Internet user has left the website A 130, because the host site 160 can use the style information about the website A 130 to present a similar experience at the community A 170. One way style information can be acquired is by spidering, e.g., searching the corresponding websites for style information. Another way is to allow the website owners to modify the style information. Exclusive indicators include indicators that a website owner has purchased from the host site 160. Certain indicators can be exclusive to one or more message boards. An owner of a website or group of websites can purchase an indicator. Only message boards corresponding to the website or group of websites and/or message boards approved by the owner of the purchased indicator can then use the purchased indicator to describe messages, boards, and/or communities. For example, if the owner of website A 130 purchases the indicator "game," then the indicator "game" may be disallowed from the community B 180, the community C 190, and the message boards and messages associated with these communities. Further indicator information includes indicators to be associated with an entire community or website.

Scrubber and polisher information includes guidelines specific to each community as to how the scrubber and polisher of the host site 160 should operate. The scrubber is a program that eliminates or modifies wording which may be offensive or unacceptable. The host site 160 can include a default list of words to be scrubbed from messages posted to a community. The website owner can modify the list of words to be scrubbed from the community.

The polisher is a program that substitutes or modifies words in posted messages. For example, a message including a name of a product of the website owner can be polished to include a link to purchasing information about the product, catalog information about the product, and/or further sources of information about the product. The website owner can decide a list of words to be polished and the resulting words or links after polishing. The accounting database 238 keeps track of how much the website owners should be charged for the services of the host site 160. For eaxmple, if the owner of a website accesses statistics about a community or Internet users and/or the accounting database 238 may charge the website owner a corresponding amount.

The forwarding engine 225 keeps track of the Internet user 110 visiting a community, identifies preferences of the Internet user 110 based on identifier statistics, suggests other message boards, other communities, and other Internet users that may share these preferences, and forwards the Internet user 110 to a corresponding location if the Internet user 110 accepts the suggestion. Figure 3 is a block diagram of a process flow 300 of an Internet messaging system having forwarding. At step 310, an Internet user 110 visits the website B 140. At step 320, the Internet user 110 enters the community B 180, for example, through the community B link 145. At this point, if the Internet user 110 has not previously registered with the host site 160, the Internet user 110 may register with the host site 160 and begin a new user record to be stored in the user database 232. If the Internet user 110 has previously registered and a user record for the Internet user 110 already exists in the user database 232, the Internet user 110 logs in. The user record corresponding to the Internet user 110 is recalled from the user database 232 into memory.

At step 330, the Internet user 110 enters message board 4 182. The Internet user 110 may browse the community B 180 to find a message board interesting to the Internet user 110, and decide that the topics, messages, and/or indicators associated with message board 4 182 are interesting. At step 340, the Internet user 110 posts and/or reads messages. At step 350, the indicator statistics of the user record in memory are updated to reflect the indicators associated with the posted/read messages, message board 4 182, community B 180, and/or website B 140. At step 360, the forwarding engine 225 processes the user record in combination with indicators of various message boards. At step 370, the forwarding engine 225 suggests one or more message boards, in this case the message board 1 172 and the message board 2 174 of the community A 170. If the Internet user 110 accepts the suggestion, the Internet user 110 is forwarded by the forwarding engine 225 to the message board 1 172 or the message board 2 174 of the community A 170. The accounting database 238 may be updated to reflect a credit for the owner of website B 140 and a debit for the owner of website A 130.

Figure 4 is an example matrix 400 that ranks message boards to be suggested to an Internet user 110 after the forwarding engine 225 processes the indicator statistics. The indicators 410 include: male, teen, dreams, electric, game, music, and software. An example user record 420 stored on the user database 232 includes: a user profile, read message statistics, and posted message statistics. The "male" and "teen" indicators in the user profile are examples of profile and demographic indicators, e.g., determined when the Internet user 110 first registers at the host site 160 through any of the communities. Although a weight of 1 is shown for the "male" indicator in the user profile, this can be changed by the host site 160 and/or a website owner. A null value for an indicator may show that the Internet user 110 associated with the user record 420 never read or posted a message to a message board and/or community associated with the indicator. A null value, e.g. for the "music" indicator, may also show that the Internet user 110 associated with the user record 420 does not fit the demographic or profile information of that indicator, as determined by the Internet user 110, the host site 160, and/or the website owner. The read message statistics and posted message statistics in the user record may be calculated differently, for example by incrementing a posted message indicator by a high value when the Internet user posts a message to a message board associated with the posted message indicator, and a low value when the Internet user reads a message on a message board associated with the posted message indicator.

The message board indicators 430 list the different weights assigned to indicators associated with the message boards. The particular indicators and/or the weights of the indicators can be assigned by the Internet user 110, the website owner, and/or the host site 160. A null value for an indicator of a message board, e.g. the "electric" indicator, may show that the message board was never associated with that indicator. A particular message board can be weighted more or less heavily, and/or all message boards associated with a community can be weighted more or less heavily.

The message board ranking shows the results after the forwarding engine 225 has processed the user record 420 and the message board indicators 430. In this example, the values are simply the product of the message board indicators and the read message statistics for each indicator. All the indicator products are then summed to yield totals 450 that rank the message boards. Other processing methods include one or more mathematical operations involving one or more indicators in the user record 420 and/or one or more message board indicators 430. In this example, the forwarding engine 225 may suggest message board 1 172 and message board 2 174 to the Internet user 110 as other message boards which match the preferences of the Internet user 110. In other ranking methods, another correspondence is found between the user record 420 and the message board indicators 430 to rank the message boards for identifying a message board to suggest to the Internet user 110.

In some embodiments, the following can be accomplished by the accounting database 238.

A website owner may be charged periodically for host site services, such as a purchase of an exclusive indicator for a limited time, web design services for the website, and/or hosting a community. In one business model, the host site 160 charges a website a first amount for forwarding a user to the community associated with the website, from a community associated with another website. For example, if an Internet user 110 was forwarded from the community B 180 or the community C 190 to the community A 170, the owner of the website A 130 corresponding to the community A 170 might be charged the first amount.

To incentivize the owner of the website A 130 into consenting to the forwarding of Internet users out of the community A 170, a second amount can be refunded from the first amount for each time a particular Internet user is forwarded out of the community A 170. For example, if an Internet user Smith is forwarded to the community A 170, the owner of the website A 130 might be charged the first amount. If the Internet user Smith is later forwarded from the community A 170 to the community B 180, the owner of the website A 130 might be refunded the second amount, such that the owner of the website A 130 is charged a net amount equal to the first amount less the second amount. Still later, if the Internet user Smith is forwarded from the community A 170 to the community C 190, the owner of the website A 130 might be refunded the second amount again, such that the owner of the website A 130 is charged a net amount equal to the first amount less twice the second amount. Refunds of the second amount might be limited to the first amount, such that a website owner is never entitled to a credit. This business plan alleviates some of the objections of website owners to forwarding users away to other websites. Conclusion

The foregoing description of various embodiments of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed. Many modifications and equivalent arrangements will be apparent.

Claims

CLAIMSWhat is claimed is:

1. An Internet message system for collecting statistics about an Internet user of a first message board and suggesting a second message board to the Internet user, each of the first message board and the second message board having one or more messages organized under one or more topics, and the Internet message system comprising: a first website having a link to the first message board, and the first message board having content related to the first website; a second website having a link to the second message board, and the second message board having content related to the second website; and a host site for hosting the first message board and the second message board, the host site having: a message database including: the first message board; the second message board; a first set of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the messages of the first message board; a second set of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the messages of the second message board; and a user database having a plurality of user records, each of the plurality of user records including i) login information for a user, and ii) indicator statistics collected from user activity on at least one of the first message board and the second message board; wherein the host site suggests the second message board to the Internet user based on a correspondence between i) the indicator statistics reflecting user activity on the first message board and ii) the second set of one or more indicators.

2. The system of claim 1 , further comprising site data about the first website and the second website, and the site data about the first website for presenting the first message board with a first appearance corresponding to the first website, and the site data about the second website for presenting the second message board with a second appearance corresponding to the second website.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the link to the first message board includes a uniform resource locator address of the first message board, and the link to the second message board includes a uniform resource locator address of the second message board.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the indicator statistics reflecting user activity include data collected from searching at least one of: i) the contents of one or more messages posted by the user, and ii) the contents of one or more messages read by the user.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the user activity includes posting a message on the first message board and reading a message on the first message board, and the indicator statistics reflecting user activity give a greater weight to posting a message than reading a message.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the first website is associated with an exclusive indicator, such that the exclusive indicator is included in the first set of one or more indicators, and the exclusive indicator cannot be included in the second set of one or more indicators.

7. The system of claim 1 , further including a program for modifying at least one of: i) offensive words in a posted message and ii) unacceptable words in a posted message.

8. The system of claim 1, further including a program for adding at least one of: i) information about a product to a posted message, and ii) a link to information about the product to the posted message.

9. The system of claim 1, further including accounting software charging the second website a first amount for forwarding the Internet user from the first message board to the second message board, and refunding the second website a second amount less than the first amount for forwarding the Internet user to another message board.

10. The system of claim 1, the user record of the Internet user is read from the user database into a memory when the Internet user logs in, and the user record of the Internet is saved from the memory into the user database when the Internet user logs out or times out.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein an indicator is common to the first set of one or more indicators and to the second set of one or more indicators, and the common indicator is weighted more heavily in the first set of one or more indicators than in the second set of one or more indicators.

12. An Internet message system for collecting statistics about an Internet user of a first message board, and identifying a second message board from a plurality of message boards based on a relation between the second message board and the collected statistics, comprising: a first website having a link to the first message board, and the first message board having content related to the first website; a plurality of websites each having a corresponding link to one of the plurality of message boards; and a host site for hosting the first message board and the plurality of message boards, the host site having: a message database including: the first message board; the plurality of message boards; a first set of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the messages of the first message board; a plurality of sets of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of a corresponding one of the plurality of message boards, and the plurality of sets including a second plurality of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the second message board; and a user database having a plurality of user records, each of the plurality of user records including i) login information for the Internet user, and ii) indicator statistics collected from user activity on at least one of the first message board and one of the plurality of message boards, wherein the host site identifies the second message board in the plurality of message boards by finding a relation between a first plurality of indicators characterizing the Internet user and the second plurality of one or more indicators.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the first plurality of indicators characterizing the Internet user includes at least one of profile information about the Internet user and demographic information about the Internet user.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the first plurality of indicators characterizing the Internet user includes at least one of the first set of one or more indicators.

15. An Internet message system for collecting statistics about an Internet user of a first message board and suggesting a second message board to the Internet user, each of the first message board and the second message board having one or more messages organized under one or more topics, and the Internet message system comprising: a first website having a link to the first message board, and the first message board having content related to the first website; a second website having a link to the second message board, and the second message board having content related to the second website; and a host site for hosting the first message board and the second message board, the host site having: a message database including: the first message board; the second message board; a first set of one or more indicators corresponding to the first message board; a second set of one or more indicators corresponding to the second message board; and a user database having a plurality of user records, each of the plurality of user records including indicator statistics, wherein the host site suggests the second message board to the Internet user based on a correspondence between i) the indicator statistics and ii) the second set of one or more indicators.

16. A method for suggesting a second message board to an Internet user of a first message board, the first message board and the second message board hosted by a host site, the first message board having content related to a first website, the first website having a link to the first message board, the second message board having content related to a second website, the second website having a link to the second message board, and each of the first message board and the second message board having one or more messages organized under one or more topics, comprising: linking the Internet user from the first website to the first message board; collecting indicator statistics of the Internet user based on activity of the Internet user on the first message board; processing the indicator statistics of the Internet user and indicators indicating a suggested content of the second message board; identifying a correspondence between the Internet user and the second message board; suggesting the second message board to the Internet user.

17. A system for suggesting a second message board to an Internet user of a first message board, the first message board having content related to a first website, the first website having a link to the first message board, the second message board having content related to a second website, the second website having a link to the second message board, and each of the first message board and the second message board having one or more messages organized under one or more topics, comprising: means for hosting the first message board and the second message board; means for linking the Internet user from the first website to the first message board; means for collecting indicator statistics of the Internet user based on activity of the Internet user on the first message board; means for processing the indicator statistics of the Internet user and indicators indicating a suggested content of the second message board; means for identifying a correspondence between the Internet user and the second message board; means for suggesting the second message board to the Internet user.

18. An Internet message system host for collecting statistics about an

Internet user of a first message board and suggesting a second message board to the Internet user, each of the first message board and the second message board having one or more messages organized under one or more topics, and the Internet message system host comprising: a computer system for hosting the first message board and the second message board, the computer system having: a message database including: the first message board being associated with the first website; the second message board being associated with the second website; a first set of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the messages of the first message board; a second set of one or more indicators indicating a suggested content of the messages of the second message board; and a user database having a plurality of user records, each of the plurality of user records including i) login information for a user, and ii) indicator statistics collected from user activity on at least one of the first message board and the second message board; wherein the computer system is for suggesting the second message board to the Internet user based on a correspondence between i) the indicator statistics reflecting user activity on the first message board and ii) the second set of one or more indicators.