Patent Document ID: 10007895
Application ID: 12011869

Base Claim:
1. A computer-implemented method for implementing an identity resolution service, comprising: receiving a plurality of identities on disparate online services comprising websites and service providers, wherein the identities are without having known correspondence to an entity registered on the identity resolution service when the identities are received; discovering which individual ones of the identities when compared to the plurality of the identities are likely to be for any same underlying entities, and in response to identifying two identities are likely for the same underlying entity, storing information that represents a discovered identity relationship, wherein the discovering and storing comprises: retrieving identity information for a first identity in a first internet service from the plurality of identities; retrieving identity information for a second identity in a second internet service from the plurality of identities; generating a first contextualized identity for the first identity using the retrieved identity information for the first identity, the first contextualized identity including standardized profile information of a first entity in the first internet service, and the profile information including relationship information of the first entity that associates the first identity with other identities as being inter-related or intra-related, wherein inter-related is defined by a relation to another entity and intra-related is defined by a relation to other identities representing the same entity; generating a second contextualized identity for the second identity using the retrieved identity information for the second identity, the second contextualized identity including standardized profile information of a second entity in the second internet service, and the profile information including relationship information of the second entity that associates the second identity with other identities as being inter-related or intra-related, wherein inter-related is defined by a relation to another entity and intra-related is defined by a relation to other identities representing the same entity; managing generated contextualized identities in a social graph; identifying the first contextualized identity as intra-related to the second contextualized identity through identity resolution on the social graph, the steps including: analyzing, by a computer processor, the contextualized identities and their profile information; processing the profile information of the first contextualized identity and the second contextualized identity to determine commonalties between the identities, the commonalties including: a similarity of the contextualized identity and profile information, a similarity of inter-related and intra-related identities, a directionality and character of associations between intra-related and inter-related identities; generating a likelihood value that the first contextualized identity represents the same underlying entity as the second contextualized identity based on the identified relations and determined commonalties; upon determining that the likelihood value is greater than a threshold value which indicates the two contextualized identities to be intra-related, aggregating the first contextualized identity and the second contextualized identity into a node representing an aggregated meta-identity, each aggregated meta-identity comprising a collection of intra-related contextualized identities that have been determined to represent the same underlying entity at a selected likelihood value or greater, wherein the aggregated meta-identity's node combines information and relationships from the plurality of contextualized identities to generate a unified profile; and responding to requests for graph operations for identity information by utilizing the aggregated meta-identity or unified profile associated with one or more intra-related contextualized identities in place of the one or more intra-related identities; wherein the identity resolution services is implemented using one or more computer memories.

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Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 wherein online services have types, and further comprising searching the computer memories for aggregated meta-identities related to a first aggregated meta-identity by commonalties wherein the contextualized identities of the aggregated meta-identities are associated with online services of the same type.