Patent ID: 11889388
Assignee: GROUPON, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 0:
1. A computer-implemented method for providing admission to location-based virtual groups of users of mobile devices, the computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving information from an administrator user to define a virtual group, the received information including an anchor point with a geographic location around which a geographic area of the virtual group is centered, a location boundary governing user admission to the virtual group, and user interaction rules that specify types of actions that users who are part of the virtual group may take;
receiving a current geographic location of a selected user;
comparing the current geographic location of the selected user to the location boundary and, in a circumstance in which the current geographic location satisfies the location boundary:
causing outputting of a virtual group description interface to a display of a mobile device associated with the selected user;
causing outputting of a join invitation interface to the display of the mobile device associated with the selected user;
receiving a join acceptance indication from the mobile device associated with the selected user based on user engagement of the join invitation interface; and
in response to receiving the join acceptance indication, automatically updating a participant list of the virtual group to include the selected user and provisioning communications among users of the participant list based on the user interaction rules for the virtual group.