Apparatuses and methods for recommending a path through an information space

摘要

A recommendation apparatus for determining, for a user, a set of one or more recommended paths through an information space in response to receiving from the user a path request message. Advantageously, in some embodiments, the path recommender apparatus determines a recommended path by analyzing a set of paths, where each path in the set was traversed by a person who is in a “social graph” belonging to the user (e.g., each path in the set was traversed by one of the user's Facebook friends). In this way, paths can be recommended to the user based on paths that are popular with the user's friends.

主权项

1. A path recommendation apparatus for recommending to a user a path through an information space comprising a plurality of interconnected information objects, comprising:
a data storage system for storing, for each of a plurality of persons, browse history information associated with the person, the browse history information comprising information identifying information objects that the person has previously browsed; a network interface for receiving path request messages; and a data processing system configured to perform a method in response to the network interface receiving a path request message that was transmitted by a communication device operated by the user, where the path request message requests a recommended path through the information space, the method comprising: determining a set of persons who are in a social graph belonging to the user, said set of persons including a first person who is a different person than the user; determining the recommended path through the information space wherein the determining step comprises using at least some of the stored browse history information in determining the recommended path, wherein at least a portion of said stored browse history information that is used in determining the recommended path comprises stored browse history information that identifies a set of two or more information objects that said first person has previously browsed; and using the network interface to transmit to the communication device a path request response message comprising information identifying the determined recommended path, wherein the step of determining the recommended path further comprises: forming a set of two or more candidate paths using at least some of the stored browse history information; determining which of said candidate paths included in said set includes an information object providing information on a predetermined specific topic; forming from the set of candidate paths a subset of candidate paths such that each candidate path included in the subset of candidate paths includes an information object providing information on the predetermined specific topic; and selecting the recommended path from the subset of candidate paths.