Patent Document ID: 20150120718
Application ID: 14061804
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method for identifying at least one prospect answerer for a question on a question-answer (QA) forum, the method comprising: accessing QA forum activity associated with users of a QA forum, wherein the QA forum activity contains historical questions, historical answers, and profiles, each having elements including QA forum information; accessing historical online social activity corresponding to the users of the QA forum, each historical online social activity having elements including at least social activity information; determining, based on performing a first similarity calculation, a similarity between elements of a question on the QA forum, and the elements of the QA forum activity associated with each of the users of the QA forum and the elements of the historical online social activity corresponding to each of the users of the QA forum; selecting, based on results of the first similarity calculation, at least one user of the QA forum as an at least one model answerer, wherein elements associated with and corresponding to the at least one model answerer are similar to the elements of the question; determining, based on performing a second similarity calculation, a similarity between the elements associated with and corresponding to each of the users of the QA forum other than the at least one model answerer, and the elements associated with and corresponding to the at least one model answerer; and identifying, based on results of the second similarity calculation, at least one prospect answerer amongst the users of the QA forum, wherein elements associated with and corresponding to the at least one prospect answerer are similar to the elements associated with and corresponding to the at least one model answerer.