Patent ID: 8374984
Filing Date: 2013-02-12
Classification: G06Q,H04N

Abstract:
1. A method for suggesting a time for live communications among a plurality of users, the method comprising: for at least one of the users, collecting content-consumption-time information for the user; for each of the other users of the plurality of users, collecting either content-consumption-time information or communications-availability information for that user; based, at least in part, on the collected content-consumption-time information and on the collected communications-availability information, if any, predicting, for each of the plurality of users, a time when that user will be available for communications, the prediction based on more than content; attempting to correlate the predicted communications-availability times for the plurality of users; and if the correlating produces at least one predicted live-communications-availability time shared among the plurality of users, then presenting to at least one user a predicted live-communications-availability time; else if the correlating produces no predicted live-communications-availability time shared among the plurality of users but produces at least one predicted live-communications-availability time shared among a plural but proper subset of the plurality of users, then presenting to at least one user a predicted live-communications-availability time; else if the correlating produces no predicted live-communications-availability time shared among a plurality of the users, then informing at least one user of this result; wherein if the correlating produces no predicted live-communications-availability time shared among the plurality of users but produces a plurality of predicted live-communications-availability times each shared among a plural but proper subset of the plurality of users, then presenting to at least one user a predicted live-communications-availability time that is shared among a largest subset of the plurality of users.