U.S. patent application number 13/733064 was filed with the patent office on 2013-05-16 for collaborative bookmarking.
This patent application is currently assigned to International Business Machines Corporation. The applicant listed for this patent is International Business Machines Corporation. Invention is credited to Christopher W. Kirby.
Application Number | 20130124541 13/733064 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 42132729 |
Filed Date | 2013-05-16 |
United States Patent
Application |
20130124541 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Kirby; Christopher W. |
May 16, 2013 |
COLLABORATIVE BOOKMARKING
Abstract
A method and system for collaborating tags in a bookmarking
system wherein the bookmarking system includes a plurality of tags
applied to content items by a plurality of users, the method and
system including, examining all the tags that are applied to all
the content items, determining whether two tags have been assigned
to the same content item, if two tags have been assigned to the
same content item, computing the relative strength of each of the
two tags with respect to each other.
Inventors: |
Kirby; Christopher W.;
(Winnipeg, CA) |
|
Applicant: |
Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Type |
International Business Machines Corporation; |
Armonk |
NY |
US |
|
|
Assignee: |
International Business Machines
Corporation
Armonk
NY
|
Family ID: |
42132729 |
Appl. No.: |
13/733064 |
Filed: |
January 2, 2013 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
Number |
Filing Date |
Patent Number |
|
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12262683 |
Oct 31, 2008 |
8364718 |
|
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13733064 |
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Current U.S.
Class: |
707/750 ;
707/748 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06F 16/9562 20190101;
G06F 16/23 20190101 |
Class at
Publication: |
707/750 ;
707/748 |
International
Class: |
G06F 17/30 20060101
G06F017/30 |
Claims
1. A method of collaborating tags in a bookmarking system wherein
the bookmarking system comprises a plurality of tags applied to a
plurality of content items by a plurality of users comprising:
examining, by a processor, all the tags that are applied to all the
content items; determining, by the processor, whether two tags have
been assigned to one of said plurality of content items; if two
tags have been assigned to one of said plurality of content items,
computing, by the processor, a relative strength of each of the two
tags with respect to each other; and providing a representation of
the relative strength between the tags in the bookmarking
system.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein the relative strength is computed
by counting a number of occurrences of each of the two tags on all
the commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking system,
and dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences of each
of the two tags in the entire bookmarking system.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining the
relative strength between all the tags in the bookmarking system
that have been assigned to one of said plurality of content
items.
4. The method of claim 3 wherein the relative strength is computed
by counting the number of occurrences of each of two tags on all
the commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking system
and dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences of each
of the two tags in the entire bookmarking system.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the representation comprises tags
having varied size, weight, style, color, or face of font dependent
on relative strength of the tags.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation comprises tags
having lines disposed between tags of common assignment, wherein
the lines have varying width or color to indicate a direction of
relationships between tags of common assignment.
7. The method of claim 5, wherein the representation comprises tags
having relationships whose relative strength is above a system or
user-defined threshold.
8. A system for collaborating tags in a bookmarking system wherein
the bookmarking system comprises a plurality of tags applied to a
plurality of content items by a plurality of users comprising: a
computer, said computer comprising a one or more user computer
interface; a collaborative bookmarking database linked to the one
or more user computer interface, wherein users utilize the one or
more user computer interface to apply tags to said plurality of
content items; a relationship database linked to the collaborative
bookmarking database, wherein the relationship database computes a
relative strength of each tag applied to one of said plurality of
content items, and further wherein the relationship database
provides a representation of the relative strength between the tags
in the bookmarking system.
9. The system of claim 8, wherein the relative strength is computed
by counting a number of occurrences of each of two tags on all the
commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking system, and
dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences of each of
the two tags in the entire bookmarking system.
10. The system of 9, wherein the system determines the relative
strength between all the tags in the bookmarking system that have
been assigned to one of said plurality of content items.
11. The system of claim 10, wherein the representation comprises
tags having varied size, weight, style, color, or face of font
dependent on relative strength of the tags.
12. The system of claim 10, wherein the representation comprises
tags having lines disposed between tags of common assignment,
wherein the lines have varying width or color to indicate a
direction of relationships between tags of common assignment.
13. The system of claim 10, wherein the representation comprises
tags having relationships whose relative strength is above a system
or user-defined threshold.
14. A computer program product comprising program code encoded in a
non-transitory computer readable medium for instructing a system to
relate tags in a collaborative bookmarking system wherein the
bookmarking system comprises a plurality of tags applied to a
plurality of content items by a plurality of users, the program
code configured to cause a computer to perform the method
comprising: examining all the tags that are applied to all the
content items; determining whether two tags have been assigned to
one of said plurality of content items; if two tags have been
assigned to the same content item, computing a relative strength of
each of the two tags with respect to each other; and providing a
representation of the relative strength between the tags in the
bookmarking system.
15. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the relative
strength is computed by counting a number of occurrences of each of
the two tags on all the commonly assigned content items within the
bookmarking system, and dividing by the sum total of the number of
occurrences of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking
system.
16. The computer program product method of claim 14, wherein the
method further comprises determining the relative strength between
all the tags in the bookmarking system that have been assigned to
one of said plurality of content items.
17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein the relative
strength is computed by counting the number of occurrences of each
of two tags on all the commonly assigned content items within the
bookmarking system and dividing by the sum total of the number of
occurrences of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking
system.
18. The computer program product of claim 14, wherein the method
further comprises providing a representation of the relative
strength between the tags in a bookmarking system, wherein the
representation comprises (a) tags having varied size, weight,
style, color, or face of font dependent on relative strength of the
tags; (b) tags having lines disposed between tags of common
assignment, wherein the lines have varying width or color to
indicate a direction of relationships between tags of common
assignment; or (c) tags having relationships whose relative
strength is above a system or user-defined threshold.
Description
REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
[0001] The present application is a continuation of Applicant's
co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 12/262,683, now allowed, the
entirety of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
TECHNICAL FIELD
[0002] The present invention relates generally to methods and
systems for collaborative bookmarking, and particularly to methods
and systems for managing a collaborative bookmarking system.
BACKGROUND
[0003] Collaborative bookmarking is a growing phenomenon within the
world-wide web. Users of a collaborative bookmarking site
contribute to the site by associating, or "tagging" uniform
resource locators (URLs) for web-accessible content with
descriptive phrases and key words, or tags. A tag is a
non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information
(such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file).
This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be
found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally
and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on
the system. On a website in which many users tag many items, this
collection of tags becomes a folksonomy, also known as social
classification, social indexing or social tagging.
[0004] The contributions of the site users is typically displayed
as a single page, random arrangement of tags commonly referred to
as a tag cloud. This is exemplified by collaborative bookmarking
sites such as delicious.com and flickr.com. Further examples of
collaborative bookmarking solutions include IBM's Dogear, the Onomi
social bookmarking system, and the Cogenz enterprise tagging
solution.
[0005] Collaborative bookmarking systems used in the corporate
environment, such as IBM's dogear and the Onomi bookmarking system,
have proven valuable for: 1) providing research analysts with a
place to share research findings; 2) fueling expertise finding and
user profiling; 3) helping to form and support social networks
around interest areas; 4) enhancing the value of other information
retrieval and aggregation capabilities on a company's intranet; and
5) influencing or augmenting corporate subject taxonomy
strategies.
[0006] These systems share a number of common features. They allow
individuals to create personal collections of bookmarks and easily
share their bookmarks with others. These centrally stored
collections can be accessed from web-connected machine. These
systems all have the ability to display tag clouds that represent
the contributions of all of a collaborative bookmarking site's
users. Tags that are explicitly entered by the user for each
bookmark allow the individual user to organize and display the
collection with meaningful labels. Furthermore, multiple tags allow
bookmarks to belong to more than one category, a limitation of
traditional hierarchically organized folders found in most web
browsers. Although bookmark collections are personally created and
maintained, they are typically visible to others. A number of user
interface elements allow social browsing of the bookmark space. For
example, user names are "clickable" links; clicking on a name
reveals the bookmark collection for that user. This allows someone
to get a sense of the topics of interest for a particular user.
Similarly, tags are also clickable, and when selected will result
in a list of all bookmarks that share that tag. This is a useful
way to browse through the entire bookmark collection to see if it
includes information sources of interest.
[0007] These systems also have the ability to display the relative
number of contributions and/or activity of contributions by varying
the weight, size, color, and style of the fonts used to display
tags within a tag cloud. For example, a tag that refers to twice as
much content as another tag may be shown using a larger font that
the other tag.
[0008] Moreover, there are other systems, such as the Mooter search
engine, that enable the automated discovery and presentation of
related topics within a group of web-accessible content but these
rely on automated topic discovery (topics are analogous to tags)
through parsing of web content. This results in a narrow set of
topics that does not represent the wide variety of viewpoints
observed in a social bookmarking solution.
[0009] What these systems all lack is the ability to present users
with tags that are related to a tag of interest. For example,
suppose a user is searching for tags related to the topic of
chairs. Current systems have no ability to relate this to the topic
of recliners and thus require the user to know that a recliner is a
specialization of the general topic of chairs.
SUMMARY
[0010] According to one embodiment of the present invention, a
method of collaborating tags in a bookmarking system is provided
wherein the bookmarking system includes a plurality of tags applied
to content items by a plurality of users, the method including,
examining all the tags that are applied to all the content items,
determining whether two tags have been assigned to the same content
item, if two tags have been assigned to the same content item,
computing the relative strength of each of the two tags with
respect to each other.
[0011] In a further aspect of the method, the relative strength is
computed by counting the number of occurrences of each of the two
tags on all the commonly assigned content items within the
bookmarking system, and dividing by the sum total of the number of
occurrences of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking
system.
[0012] In yet another aspect, the method includes determining the
relative strength between all the tags in the bookmarking system
that have been assigned to the same content items. The relative
strength is computed by counting the number of occurrences of each
of two tags on all the commonly assigned content items within the
bookmarking system and dividing by the sum total of the number of
occurrences of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking
system.
[0013] In still a further aspect, the method includes providing a
representation of the relative strength between the tags in a
bookmarking system. The representation can be provided in a variety
of forms. It can include tags having varied size, weight, style,
color, or face of font dependent on relative strength of the tags.
The representation can include tags having lines disposed between
tags of common assignment, wherein the lines have varying width or
color to indicate the direction of relationships between tags of
common assignment. It can include tags having relationships whose
relative strength is above a system or user-defined threshold.
[0014] In another embodiment of the invention, a system for
collaborating tags in a bookmarking system is provided wherein the
bookmarking system includes a plurality of tags applied to content
items by a plurality of users, the system including one or more
user interfaces, a collaborative bookmarking database linked to the
one or more users interfaces, wherein users utilize the one or more
user interfaces to apply tags to content items, and a relationship
database linked to the collaborative bookmarking database, wherein
the relationship database computes the relative strength of each
tag applied to the same content item.
[0015] In a further aspect of the system, the relative strength is
computed by counting the number of occurrences of each of two tags
on all the commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking
system, and dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences
of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking system.
[0016] In another aspect of the system, the relative strength is
computed between all the tags in the bookmarking system that have
been assigned to the same content items by counting the number of
occurrences of each of two tags on all the commonly assigned
content items within the bookmarking system and dividing by the sum
total of the number of occurrences of each of the two tags in the
entire bookmarking system.
[0017] In a further aspect of the system, a representation of the
relative strength between the tags in a bookmarking system is
provided to users of the system. The representation can be provided
in a variety of forms. It can include tags having varied size,
weight, style, color, or face of font dependent on relative
strength of the tags. The representation can include tags having
lines disposed between tags of common assignment, wherein the lines
have varying width or color to indicate the direction of
relationships between tags of common assignment. It can include
tags having relationships whose relative strength is above a system
or user-defined threshold.
[0018] In yet another embodiment of the invention, a computer
program product encoded in a computer readable medium for
instructing a system to relate tags in a collaborative bookmarking
system is provided wherein the collaborative bookmarking system
includes a plurality of tags applied to content items by a
plurality of users, the program code configured to cause the
computer to perform the method including examining all the tags
that are applied to all the content items, determining whether two
tags have been assigned to the same content item, and if two tags
have been assigned to the same content item, computing the relative
strength of each of the two tags with respect to each other.
[0019] In an aspect of the computer program product, the relative
strength is computed by counting the number of occurrences of each
of the two tags on all the commonly assigned content items within
the bookmarking system, and dividing by the sum total of the number
of occurrences of each of the two tags in the entire bookmarking
system.
[0020] In a further aspect of the computer program product, the
method includes determining the relative strength between all the
tags in the bookmarking system that have been assigned to the same
content items, wherein the relative strength is computed by
counting the number of occurrences of each of two tags on all the
commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking system and
dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences of each of
the two tags in the entire bookmarking system.
[0021] In yet another aspect of the computer program product, the
method includes providing a representation of the relative strength
between the tags in a bookmarking system, wherein the
representation can include (a) tags having varied size, weight,
style, color, or face of font dependent on relative strength of the
tags; (b) tags having lines disposed between tags of common
assignment, wherein the lines have varying width or color to
indicate the direction of relationships between tags of common
assignment; or (c) tags having relationships whose relative
strength is above a system or user-defined threshold.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS
[0022] The present invention will be more fully understood and
appreciated by reading the following Detailed Description in
conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
[0023] FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of an embodiment of a
system of the invention;
[0024] FIG. 2 shows a computational diagram of the relationship
among a plurality of tags; and
[0025] FIG. 3 shows a flow chart of an embodiment of a method of
the invention.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0026] Embodiments of the invention provide a system and method for
discovering related topics in a collaborative bookmarking
application.
[0027] Reference is made to FIG. 1, which shows an embodiment of a
system 10 for discovering related topics in a collaborative
bookmarking application. A series of users 12, 14 and 16 are shown,
although the number of users is not limited to any set number, and
as many users as possible may utilize system 10. Users 12, 14 and
16 are linked to a computer network 18. Network 18 may be a private
intranet, such as a company intranet, or the public internet.
Network 18 is linked to a collaborative bookmarking server 20,
wherein all the tags are accessed and searched by users of system
10. Collaborative bookmarking server 20 also receives new tags from
users on various content that the users are viewing. Relationship
engine 22 takes the tags as input and computes the relationships
between the tags by examining the tags that are applied to a
content item. Relationship engine 22 then computes the relative
strength of the relationships between tags by calculating the
number of times that two tags appear in common across all the
tagged content within the collaborative bookmarking database 20.
This number is then divided by the total number of times that the
tags appear within the entire collaborative bookmarking database 20
to provide a number that represents the strength of the
relationships between the tags in the bookmarking system. This
helps a user of the system in searching by providing a focused
means of identifying topics (tags) and thus content items that are
relevant to the user's topic of inquiry. This in turn enables the
user to selectively broaden or narrow their search to content items
that are more general or more specific to the user's topic of
inquiry as indicated by the strength of the relationships derived
by the invention.
[0028] In FIG. 1, Content Item 1 is tagged by users 12, 14 and 16
with the tags i) barstools, ii) furniture and barstools, and iii)
chairs, respectively. Content Item 2 is tagged by users 12, 14 and
16 with the tags i) recliners, ii) furniture and chairs, and iii)
chairs, respectively. Content Item 3 is tagged by user 12 with the
tags i) furniture and couches. Table 1 below illustrates the
aggregate appearance counts for the tags assigned to each of the
three content items by the users in the collaborative bookmarking
system 10.
TABLE-US-00001 TABLE 1 Aggregate and total number of appearances
for assigned tags within the collaborative bookmarking solution.
Content Tag Item Barstools Chairs Couches Furniture Recliners 1 2 1
0 1 0 2 0 2 0 1 1 3 0 0 1 1 0 Appearances 2 3 1 3 1
[0029] The number of times that each tag appears in relation to the
other tags in system 10 is calculated. This is performed by taking
all content items where a tag occurs, totaling the number of for
all other tags that occur for those content items. For example, in
FIG. 1, the tag "chairs," occurs in content items 1 and 2. In
content items 1 and 2, there are two occurrences of the tag
"barstool," two occurrences of the tag "furniture" and one
occurrence of the tag "recliner." This is an intermediate step
before calculating the strength metric between related topics.
Table 2 below documents the number of times that each tag appears
in relation to the other tags.
TABLE-US-00002 TABLE 2 Cross-reference of tag appearances relative
to other tags. Sum of Occurrences of Tag With Each Tag in the List
of Tags List of Tags Barstools Chairs Couches Furniture Recliners
Barstools 1 0 1 0 Chairs 2 0 2 1 Couches 0 0 1 0 Furniture 2 3 1 1
Recliners 0 2 0 1
[0030] The relative strength of the relationships between pairs of
tags is calculated by dividing each entry in Table 2 by the total
number of appearances of the two tags across all content items
using the algorithm:
Strength relative = Common occurrences Tag 1 : Tag 2 ( Total
Occurrences Tag 1 + Total Occurrences Tag 2 ) ##EQU00001##
[0031] For example, for the strength of the relationship from
chairs to barstools is calculated as follows: (number of
occurrences the tag "chairs" has in common with the tag
"barstools") divided by (number of appearances of the of the tag
"barstools") plus (number of appearances of the tag "chairs") or
2/(2+3)=0.4. Similarly, the strength of the relationship from
barstools to chairs is 1/(2+3)=0.2 The following Table 3 displays
the relative strength of the relationships between related
tags.
TABLE-US-00003 TABLE 3 Relative strength of the relationships
between related tags. Relative Strength List of Tags Barstools
Chairs Couches Furniture Recliners Barstools 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.0 Chairs
0.4 0.0 0.3 0.3 Couches 0.0 0.0 0.3 0.0 Furniture 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.3
Recliners 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.3
[0032] Reference is made to FIG. 2, which shows a graphic
representation of the topics within collaborative bookmarking
system 10 of FIG. 1. The relative strengths of the relationships
between the tags is shown. A user using collaborative bookmarking
system 10 is able to quickly determine which tags to select and how
to narrow or broaden his search by viewing FIG. 2.
[0033] The strength of the relationships between tags may be
represented by (i) varying the size, weight, style, color, or face
of font used to render tags related to the user's currently
selected tag; (ii) varying the width, or color of lines used to
indicate the direction of relationships; (iii) a graph is filtered
to only show relationships whose relative strength is above a
system or user-defined threshold.
[0034] FIG. 3 shows the logic 40 of system 10. At step 42, the tags
for all content items are viewed. At step 44, a query asks if there
are two tags, for example, Tag A and Tag B, that have been assigned
to the same content item. If yes, the process continues, and at
step 46, all content items are viewed and the number of times that
Tag A appears is calculated ("total occurrences of Tag A"). At step
48, all content items are viewed and the number of times that Tag B
appears is calculated ("total occurrences of Tag B"). At step 50,
the number of times that Tag A and Tag B appear in relation to each
other is calculated ("common occurrences of Tag A.fwdarw.Tag B" and
common occurrences of Tag B.fwdarw.Tag A"). At step 52, the
relative strength of Tag A with respect to Tag B is calculated by
taking the common occurrences of Tag A.fwdarw.Tag B from step 50
and dividing by the sum total of the total occurrences of Tag B
from step 48 and the total occurrences of Tag A from step 46. The
relative strength of Tag B with respect to Tag A is also calculated
at step 52 by taking the common occurrences of Tag B.fwdarw.Tag A
from step 50 and dividing by the sum total of the total occurrences
of Tag A from step 46 and the total occurrences of Tag B from step
48. The process may be continued for all tags in the bookmarking
system, to determine the relative strength of all tags that are
commonly assigned to content items. The method described in FIG. 3
can be a batch implementation or it can be implemented as a dynamic
process that integrates the computation of the total occurrences
and the relative strengths as the items are tagged.
[0035] It should be mentioned that the relationship engine exploits
the large number of users that typically use a collaborative
bookmarking solution. As multiple users tag a common piece of
content it is invariable that the users will use both common and
different tags that represent their individual categorizations of
the content. The relationship engine exploits these variations to
derive relationships between tags and display those relationships
to end users of the collaborative bookmarking system. This enables
users to selectively narrow or broaden their searches to
significantly reduce the time it takes them to locate content
relevant to their interests.
[0036] The system may be implemented using logical software
components that are installed onto physical servers. A component
can be implemented by a single instance of an application or
through multiple installations of one or more applications.
Components can be installed on any number of physical servers, i.e.
the components may be installed on separate servers, collocated on
a single server, or installed separately and collocated in any
combination of the two options. In reference to FIG. 1, lines
between the components represent logical communication paths,
likely implemented using a computer network and clouds represent
logical computer networks comprised of a variety of networking
components and persons represent users of the collaborative
bookmarking solution.
[0037] Moreover, the relationship engine can be is integrated into
the collaborative bookmarking system as functional subset or via a
defined extension mechanism; it can be integrated as a functional
subset or extension into a storage subsystem such as a computer
database that supports the collaborative bookmarking solution; it
can be integrated into a knowledge management or relationship
discovery component as a functional subset or via a defined
extension mechanism.
[0038] In a further embodiment, the method of an embodiment herein
may be implemented within or between one or more computer systems,
by executing computer-readable program code stored on
computer-readable media. The computer-readable media may include,
for example, any number or mixture of fixed or removable media
(such as one or more fixed disks, random access memories (RAMs),
read-only memories (ROMs), or compact discs), at either a single
location or distributed over a network. The computer-readable
program code may include, for example, instructions embodied in
software or firmware.
[0039] The computer-readable program code may include various
components, such as program code, code to display a user interface,
code to set up a collaborative bookmarking system to include
content items, code to collaborate tags in a bookmarking system
that are applied to the content items, code to examine all the tags
that are applied to all the content items, code to determine
whether two tags have been assigned to the same content item, code
to compute the relative strength of each of the two tags with
respect to each other, code to compute the relative strength by
counting the number of occurrences of each of the two tags on all
the commonly assigned content items within the bookmarking system,
and dividing by the sum total of the number of occurrences of each
of the two tags in the entire bookmarking system, and code to
determine the relative strength between all the tags in the
bookmarking system that have been assigned to the same content
items.
[0040] Although the present invention has been described in
connection with preferred embodiments thereof, it will be
appreciated by those skilled in the art that additions, deletions,
modifications, and substitutions not specifically described may be
made without department from the spirit and scope of the invention
as defined in the appended claims.
* * * * *