Augmenting a real-time collaboration with ranked electronic bulletin board posts

摘要

An approach for augmenting a current instant message (IM) session is presented. The subjects of the first and second posts of electronic bulletin boards are determined to be similar to the text dialog of the IM session. The first post is determined to be from a first user who previously collaborated with a participant of the text dialog. The second post is determined to be from a second user who has not collaborated with the participant. Based in part on the first post being from the first user who previously collaborated with the participant and the second post being from the second user who has not collaborated with the participant, a first hyperlink to the first post is displayed relative to a second hyperlink to the second post to indicate the first post is ranked higher in relevance to the current IM session than the second post.

主权项

1. A method of augmenting a current instant message session comprising a real-time, text dialog among a plurality of participants, the plurality of participants having respective computing devices displaying respective windows containing the text dialog of the current instant message session, the method comprising the steps of:
a computer determining that a first post included in a first discussion thread of a first electronic bulletin board and a second post included in a second discussion thread of the first or a second electronic bulletin board have similar subject matter as the text dialog of the current instant message session based in part on a similarity of key words within the first and second posts and the current instant message session; the computer determining that the first and second posts are from first and second users, respectively, with whom one of the plurality of participants previously collaborated in the current instant message session or a prior instant message session; the computer determining that the one participant participated in the second discussion thread but not the first discussion thread; and based at least in part on the first and second posts being from the first and second users with whom the one participant has previously collaborated in an instant message session and the one participant having participated in the second discussion thread but not the first discussion thread, the computer displaying in the window of the computing device of the one participant a first hyperlink to the first post before or above a second hyperlink to the second post to indicate that the first post is ranked higher in relevance to the current instant message session than the second post.