Patent Document ID: 8438165
Application ID: 13105920

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method of identifying user interests, using a computer processor, comprising: receiving text from a shared topic feed distributed to the computer processor, the shared topic feed comprising at least one search query entered by a user in a public stream and a link associated with the search query, and wherein the shared topic feed further includes search results returned for the query submitted by the user along with a link corresponding to each of the search results; receiving an indication that the user has interacted with a portion of the received text, including receiving an indication that the user has submitted the query entered by the user for execution by a search engine; receiving marked text marked with an explicit interest indication that the user is interested in a subject matter or a person identified in the marked text; identifying content words in the portion of the received text; removing the marked text from the content words; performing a statistical analysis on the content words, with the marked text removed, to identify the user interests, wherein the user interests include a topic of interest that includes at least one of a subject matter of interest and a person of interest; identifying the user interests based on the explicit interest indication and the statistical analysis; and displaying an indication to the user indicative of the identified user interests.

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Claim 13:
13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the user can specify sources of the topic feed by specifying subject matter of posts to be received and people from whom posts are to be received, and further comprising: receiving an input from the user indicating that the user wishes to receive posts in the shared topic feed from people, and about subject matter, in the topic of interest; and including, in subsequent shared topic feed posts distributed to the computer processor, posts from the people, and about the subject matter, in the topic of interest.