Patent ID: 7970762

Claim:
A method for providing program suggestions to a user based on electronic program guides (EPGs), comprising: retrieving electronic program guide articles from an electronic program guide articles database; and suggesting at least one electronic program guide article to the user based on the retrieved electronic program guide articles and based on a user profile, wherein the user profile corresponds to a generic stereotype user profile, when providing a suggestion for the first time, to a linear combination of the generic stereotype user profile, at least one specific stereotype profile, and an individual user profile during a first predetermined period during the collection of data, and to the individual user profile afterwards, wherein during the first predetermined period, a first weighting factor of the at least one specific stereotype profile is first increased and then decreased and a second weighting factor of the generic stereotype user profile is continuously decreased, wherein the generic stereotype user profile describes an average interest in everything and the specific stereotype user profile defines interests of a user who focuses on a specific topic, and wherein the user profile comprises a list of word-weight pairs, wherein the weights are computed based on user features that represent a typical general behaviour.