Method and system for determining subscriber demand for multimedia content

摘要

A method of determining demand for multimedia content in a multimedia provider network includes receiving a content demand statistics (CDS) request from a client application where the request identifies a subscriber set. Responsive to the CDS request, selected CDS data is retrieved from a CDS subsystem. The CDS data is indicative of demand for multimedia content among subscribers in the subscriber set. The retrieved CDS data is delivered to the client application. The selected data may be selected from past data, present data, and future data. The CDS request indicates a set of buddy subscribers and the messaging server retrieves CDS data associated with the buddy subscribers. A security subsystem may be accessed and to determine, prior to retrieving CDS data for a particular buddy subscriber, whether the particular buddy subscriber has authorized the requesting subscriber.

主权项

1. A demand determination method, comprising:
receiving, from a client application associated with a first subscriber, a content demand statistics request identifying a second subscriber and a demand type for the second subscriber wherein the demand type for the second subscriber indicates which of a set of available demand types is requested and wherein the set of available demand types includes past demand, current demand, and future demand; responsive to the content demand statistics request, retrieving selected content demand data of the demand type from a content demand statistics subsystem, wherein the selected content demand data is indicative of demand for multimedia content by the second subscriber; delivering the selected content demand data to the client application; and notifying the second subscriber of the content demand statistics request; wherein past demand corresponds to content previously watched, current demand corresponds to content currently being watched, and future demand corresponds to future content that is currently scheduled.