Patent ID: 8712952
Filing Date: 2014-04-29
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method of selecting a target with respect to a specific behavior as a group of entities in a population of communicating entities, wherein a social network representation is used for the population of communicating entities in a plurality of observation periods, such that, for an observation period, a social network has nodes respectively representing the entities of the population and links between the nodes, each link between two nodes representing at least one communication event observed in said observation period between the entities represented by said two nodes, each node being associated with a respective set of at least one node connected thereto by one of the links, the method comprising: obtaining a first social network for a first observation period; obtaining behavioral data indicating adoption of the specific behavior by entities of the population in a time period following the first observation period; computing respective behavioral centrality measures for the nodes of the first social network, wherein a behavioral centrality measure for one of the nodes depends on adoption or non-adoption of said behavior in said time period by each entity of the population represented by a connected node of the set associated with said one of the nodes; building a predictive model having input data and first predicted behavioral centrality measures as output data, the predictive model being determined to provide a best match of the computed behavioral centrality measures with first predicted behavioral centrality measures resulting from application of the predictive model to input data from the first social network; obtaining a second social network for a second observation period more recent than the first observation period; applying the predictive model to input data from the second social network to provide second predicted behavioral centrality measures; and selecting entities to be in the target based on information including the second predicted behavioral centrality measures,