Meta-Network Aggregating Cross-Platform User Relationships
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Solution Overview
Problem
Individuals face difficulties in tracking and managing relationships across multiple social and business networks, leading to missed opportunities for mutual benefits due to the fragmentation of user relationships across different platforms.
Innovation Solution
A meta-network system that aggregates user information and relationships from various networks, enabling users to search for and establish connections based on specified attributes and facilitating the propagation of relationships across multiple platforms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users maintain accounts in multiple separate networks to manage different types of relationships, then the ability to establish specialized relationships in appropriate networks is improved, but the complexity of tracking and managing relationships across networks increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a relationship management system that acts as an intermediary layer between users and multiple networks. This system automatically tracks relationships across different networks (social, business, professional) and presents a unified view to users, eliminating the need for manual tracking while preserving the benefits of network-specific relationships.
Solution Approach 2:
The relationship management system provides universal functionality across multiple networks by implementing a single system that can manage diverse relationship types (social, business, professional) simultaneously. The system uses common data structures and management protocols to handle different network-specific relationship formats, enabling users to manage all relationships through one interface.
2Loss of information
If users manually track relationships across multiple networks, then awareness of relationships in specific networks is maintained, but the time required to compile and manage relationship lists increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically establishing and maintaining relationship records across multiple networks in advance. When a user joins a network or establishes a relationship, the system proactively captures this information and integrates it into the unified relationship management structure, so that relationship lists are already compiled and updated when needed, eliminating manual compilation time.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements continuous feedback mechanisms that automatically monitor and update relationship status across networks. The system regularly queries connected networks for relationship changes and updates the centralized relationship database accordingly, ensuring users always have current relationship information without manual intervention.
3Reliability
If users establish relationships in one network, then relationships are recorded in that specific network, but the ability to leverage these relationships in other networks is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges relationship data from multiple networks into a unified relationship structure. The system combines relationship records from different networks (social, business, professional) while preserving network-specific details, creating a consolidated view that allows users to leverage relationships across networks. The system identifies relationships that exist in multiple networks and presents them in a way that enables cross-network relationship management.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for facilitating relationships across multiple networks is described. The meta-network includes relationship information describing users, the networks to which such users belong, and the relationships that they have established within such networks. When a relationship is established in a network, it can be used to propagate relationships across any number of networks with the same or different users. The meta-network enhances the users' ability to search for information and manage their relationships across multiple networks. A user can search for other users according to one or more user-specified attributes. One or more users satisfying the user-specified attributes are identified, and a similarity measure may be determined for each of the identified users. A mapping interface is displayed to the user to enable the user to visually compare the identified users having a similarity measure within the displayed range. The mapping interface allows the user to invite one or more of the displayed users to establish a relationship with the user.