Abstract:
A method and system which adaptively recommends potential relationships to individual users based on a set of items that are known to be of interest to the user, such as a set of potential matches previously messaged by the user. The system generates the adaptive recommendations using previously-generated user activity that indicates the user&#39;s preferences of particular attributes.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application claims the benefit, under 35 U.S.C. §119(e), of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/074,142, filed Jun. 19, 2008, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The present systems and methods relate to the field of online dating and social relationship services, and more particularly to a system and method of adaptively selecting and displaying potential user profile matches based upon a user&#39;s prior viewing and selection history. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Online dating and social relationship services have become a popular way for individuals to meet and to begin relationships whether for friendship, romance, or the pursuit of shared interests. As Internet-based technology has evolved, so have the online dating services and social relationship services. What began as chat rooms and sometimes even as telephone-based services have evolved into more sophisticated services offering photographs, videos, highly detailed profiles and predictive compatibility tests all intended to allow a user to be matched more precisely with a set of potential new acquaintances or dates. 
     Unfortunately, the fault with these highly detailed profiles and with the search functions and predictive compatibility tests built upon them is contained in a simple truth: what people say they wish to do is not exactly what they will actually do and that the things that people say they want are not necessarily the things that these same people actually want. 
     On one particular dating site, plentyoffish.com, a complex variability has been observed between the desired characteristics of a potential match that a user will describe in completing a user survey and in the characteristics that exist within the profiles that the user actually chooses to view or select for further contact. 
     For example, in filling out a user survey, the user may indicate a preference for non-smokers, but in selecting profiles to view and users to contact, may not pay much attention to the attribute of smoking. 
     Conversely, a user may indicate in the user survey a preference for matches who are taller than 5′10″ and then adhere to that criterion when selecting user profiles. 
     One facet of the problem in providing an optimal selection of user profiles based upon survey responses is that not all questions on an online dating or social relationship survey are meaningful or important to each user. Even if the survey would allow a user to specify an importance for each attribute, the user&#39;s estimation could still be in error. The observed activity of the user in relation to candidate user profiles, recorded over time, is a better measure of their actual preferences and predictor of their future preferences. 
     There exists then, a need for an online dating service or social relationship service where the selection of potential matches to be displayed to a particular user is adaptive to the actual interests and desires of that user based upon his or her actual viewing and contact history in addition to the interest and desire information originally reported and maintained in the user&#39;s profile. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In one aspect of the present systems and methods, a computer-implemented method of matching a user of a social relationship service and a set of candidate user profiles for viewing and contact comprises providing a plurality of candidate user profiles to said user, recording said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions in relation to said candidate user profiles, correlating said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions to a plurality of user profile attribute values, identifying a second set of candidate user profiles based upon said correlated profile attribute values, and providing said second set of candidate user profiles to said user. 
     In a second aspect of the present systems and methods, a computer-implemented method of determining the preferences of a user of a social relationship service for candidate user profiles based upon said user&#39;s viewing and contact histories comprises correlating said user&#39;s viewing and contact history to a plurality of user profile attribute values, calculating weighting factors for the importance of each user profile attribute; and using said correlated user preferences and said weighting factors to determine a total ranking score per candidate user profile; and retrieving and ordering said candidate user profiles from a data store based upon their ranking scores. 
     In a third aspect of the present systems and methods, a computer-implemented method of selecting and displaying user profile records comprises correlating a user&#39;s viewing and selection-for-contact choices with a plurality of attribute values and querying user profile records within a data store based upon said plurality of attribute values. 
     In a fourth aspect of the present systems and methods, a computer-implemented method of matching a user of an online dating service and a set of candidate user profiles for viewing and contact comprises providing a plurality of candidate user profiles to said user, recording said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions in relation to said candidate user profiles, correlating said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions to a plurality of user profile attribute values, identifying a second set of candidate user profiles based upon said correlated profile attribute values; and providing said second set of candidate user profiles to said user. 
     In a fifth aspect of the present systems and methods, a computer-implemented method of matching a user of a social relationship service and a set of candidate user profiles for viewing and contact comprises providing a plurality of candidate user profiles to said user, recording said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions in relation to said candidate user profiles, correlating said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions to a plurality of user profile attribute values, identifying a second set of candidate user profiles based upon said correlated profile attribute values; and providing said second set of candidate user profiles to said user. 
     In a sixth aspect to the present systems and methods, a computer-readable storage medium containing a set of instructions for a computer program comprises a display module for providing a plurality of candidate user profiles to said user, a recording module for recording said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions in relation to said candidate user profiles, a correlation module for correlating said user&#39;s viewing and contact actions to a plurality of user profile attribute values, and a query module for identifying and retrieving a second set of candidate user profiles from a data store based upon said correlated profile attribute values. 
     These and other features, aspects and advantages of the present systems and methods will become better understood with reference to the following drawings, description and claims. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a system diagram illustrating the components of the user profile matching service according to at least an aspect of the present systems and methods; 
         FIG. 2  is flow chart illustrating the user profile matching service according to at least an aspect of the present systems and methods; 
         FIG. 3  is an illustration of the use of population frequency and user viewing and contact frequencies to create weighting factors according to at least an aspect of the present systems and methods. 
         FIG. 4  is an illustration of the use of attribute occurrence and weighting factors to produce rankings of user profiles within a hypothetical example population according to at least an aspect of the present systems and methods. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     The following detailed description is of the currently contemplated modes of carrying out the present systems and methods. The description is not to be taken in a limiting sense, but is made merely for the purpose of illustrating the general principles of the present systems and methods, since the scope of the present systems and methods is best defined by the appended claims. 
     In one embodiment of the present systems and methods, a social relationship service is implemented across a distributed network of computers.  FIG. 1  illustrates a system diagram of such an embodiment. 
     The system includes a number of client computers  10 ,  20 ,  30 , and  40 , connected via network connections  50  and  60  to an online matching service server  70 . This online matching service server  70  has access to a data store  80  in which are data set representing the user viewing and contact histories  90  of all users. In addition, the data store includes the candidate user profiles  100  of all users in the system. Candidate user profiles are any user profiles within the online matching service other than the user&#39;s own (though an exclusion of all user profiles not matching the user&#39;s gender preference are usually excluded). 
     In response to a user request on one of the client computers  10 ,  20 ,  30  and  40 , the online matching server  70  and data store  80  are capable of producing the sub set of candidate user profiles for a user  110 , as shown. 
       FIG. 2  illustrates a process of the online matching service. The process begins by providing a plurality of candidate user profiles to a user in  200 . Next, the user&#39;s viewing and contact actions are recorded in  210  and then correlated to user profile attribute values in  220 . 
     Based upon the user&#39;s viewing and selection history, a second set of candidate user profiles is identified in  230  and then retrieved and provided to the user in  240 . 
     In an embodiment of the present systems and methods, the correlation of user factors to candidate user profiles is augmented by the use of weighting factors to represent the importance of the particular profile attribute to the user&#39;s selection of a profile for viewing or for contact.  FIG. 3  provides an illustration of the process of calculating these weighting factors. 
       FIG. 3  shows three tables. The first table, the Population Frequency table  300 , shows the frequency of values for two user profile attributes, “height over 5′10″” and “smoker,” within the total population of candidate user profiles. 
     The second table, User Viewing and Contact Frequency  310 , shows the frequency with which a user selected a user profile with that attribute value for viewing or chose to make contact with that user. 
     The third table, the Weighted User Preference Factors table  320 , shows one embodiment of a calculation of a weighting factor for each user profile attribute based upon the ratio of user viewing and contact frequency to population frequency. In this embodiment, the weighting factor is calculated by taking the ratio of the user viewing and contact frequency and dividing it by the population frequency of an attribute and then subtracting the result from 1.0 to get a normalized result with either a positive or negative sign. 
     These weighting factors can then be applied to rank candidate user profiles and then to select and display candidate user profiles based upon rank. 
       FIG. 4  provides an example of an embodiment of the present systems and methods, using a hypothetical four user population to show how one may apply the weighting factors of table  320  to a four user population with a set of respective attributes and user preference factors. 
     The first table  400  shows four users in a hypothetical user profile data store, Each of the candidate users possess two attributes: (Height &gt;5′10) and whether a user is a smoker. 
     For purposes of this example, we assume that the user prefers to view and contact profiles of users with Height &gt;5′10 and also prefers non-smokers. 
     The second table,  410 , shows the result of calculating a ranking score based upon the weighting factors previously calculated in table  320  from  FIG. 3 . Each user may begin with a base score of 100. This score is then adjusted by taking each of the weighting factors and multiplying by the base factor. Lastly, if a candidate profile matches the user preference factor we may represent the weighting factor as a positive number in table  410  (e.g., +1), and if a candidate profile does not match the user preference factor we may represent the weighting factor as a negative number in table  410  (e.g., −1). 
     For user one, who is a strong match for the user, we would calculate as follows:
 
(base score)+
 
(height weighting factor*100*[−1 or 1 for attribute])+
 
(smoker weighting factor*100*[−1 or 1 for attribute])=total score
 
Yielding for user one:
 
100+0.33*100*1+−0.14*100*−1=100+33+14=147.
 
       FIG. 4  shows the results of these calculations for each user in the candidate user profile pool in table  410 . 
     The selection of user profiles may also, optionally, be affected by two additional features of the adaptable matching system used to configure how quickly the system adapts and what level of randomness to seed into the user results. 
     The first of these factors, an adaptability factor, can be used to limit how quickly the matching engine adapts to the user&#39;s observed preferences. The easiest way to think about the utility of this factor is to return to the example of the user in  FIG. 3  who has expressed a preference for non-smokers, but who may actually view and contact smokers as well as non-smokers. 
     Let us assume for purposes of example that the user has just signed up with the online service and has clicked on a single user profile before being pulled away from his or her computer to answer an incoming telephone call. Let us further assume the user profile viewed happened to be that of a smoker. 
     It turns out to be several hours before the user is able to return to the online service. As the user logs in, the question becomes, how many smokers and non-smokers should the matching engine select to display to the user? Based on the user&#39;s viewing and contact history, we see that the user has selected the profiles of smokers 100% of the time (the one single click after signing up with the service). It is undesirable to make a radical change in the selected set of user profiles (to show only smokers) on the basis of a single observation. It is useful, therefore, to have an adaptability factor, expressed as a number or a percentage that limits how quickly the system should adapt to changes in the user&#39;s observed preferences. 
     A second factor, a random sample percentage, may provide a different function. The random sample percentage may help to preserve the ability of the system to continue to adapt once the user&#39;s observed preferences have been stable for some time. The random sample percentage may be used to configure a percentage of the user profiles that will be presented to the user that are randomly selected, or at least randomly selected on the basis of one or more attributes. 
     It should be understood, of course, that the foregoing relates to exemplary embodiments of the present systems and methods and that modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the present systems and methods as set forth in the following claims.