Patent ID: 8209337

Claim:
Content recommendation apparatus, the apparatus comprising: a content recommendation server providing a content recommendation service and recommending content via a network; and a plurality of user terminals receiving the content provided by the content recommendation server via the network, wherein the content recommendation server comprises a content tag cloud generating module including a processor to generate a content tag cloud by analyzing a tag assigned to each content and accumulating frequencies per tag of each content, wherein a plurality of tags as to one content are created by a plurality of users and accumulated as the content tag cloud as to the one content and are associated with words related to the content; a user tag cloud generating module including a processor to generate a user tag cloud by accumulating frequencies per tag of contents used by a user; a similarity computing module including a processor to compute a similarity between users using the user tag cloud; and a recommending module including a processor to recommend a content by computing a probability that a target user will use a specific content based on the computed similarity between users, wherein, in the accumulation of frequencies per tag of contents used by a user, the user tag cloud generating module normalizes a frequency per tag of a content used by the user and accumulates the normalized frequency per tag, wherein the recommending module determines a user neighborhood similar to a target user and recommends a content based on a similarity between the target user and a user in the determined user neighborhood, and wherein the recommending module determines a user neighborhood based on users who have used at least two contents in a set of contents used by the target user and determines N users from the user neighborhood most similar to the target user based on the similarity between users computed by the similarity computing module.