Entity following

摘要

The present invention outlines a genuine entity following system that also addresses data source limitation. When reviewing entity-related objects in web content, a web user designates one or more entities to follow in real time. More particularly, the present invention is directed through strategic deployment of a dynamic crawler upon selection of a “follow” pointer over an object in a web browser such that a web user can automatically designate entities to be followed and receive alerts at predetermined temporal intervals when new information regarding such designated entities becomes available. A web entity engine of the present invention is designed to discover trending entities at any given time while generating output activity (i.e., signal) streams for this entity.

主权项

1. A system comprising:
a processor; and a computer storage medium coupled to the processor, wherein the computer storage medium has a set of instructions stored thereon that, when executed on the processor, implement a method comprising:
receiving, from more than one data source, content to be stored in a searchable index;annotating the content with a topic selected from a plurality of topics;aggregating the annotated content as a feed pertaining to an entity based on the topic with which the content is annotated, the annotating performed only if the entity is ranked among a top number of entities, the top number set by a user;receiving a search engine request entered by the user, the search engine request relating to the entity;causing the annotated content to be displayed via a user interface in response to the received search engine request, wherein a visual effect indicates that the entity is available for designation;associating a following with the entity responsive to receiving a user designation of the entity; andcausing the feed pertaining to the entity to be displayed via the user interface.