Patent ID: 7953735

Claim:
An information processing apparatus for selecting a content piece satisfying a predetermined condition, specified by a user, from a content group, the information processing apparatus comprising: a clustering unit for classifying each of content pieces constituting the content group into any of a plurality of first clusters in each of layers associated with items of metadata of the content pieces according to classification of the metadata by a distance measure for the metadata, the classification of the metadata being defined for each of the layers; a database indicating correspondences between the content pieces and the first clusters in the layers into which the content pieces are classified; a cluster mapping unit for specifying a first cluster corresponding to the predetermined condition for each of the layers from among the first clusters and specifying a content piece corresponding to the specified first cluster from among the content pieces; and a providing unit for providing, to the user, the specified content piece and a reason statement indicating the reason for specifying the content piece, wherein the reason statement is generated using text extracted from an existing review of the specified content piece, the extracted text having at least one word associated with a keyword of the specified first cluster.