Centralized Profile Data Management via Crowdsourcing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in managing and maintaining accurate and organized personal data across multiple online services, leading to redundancy, incongruence, and loss of information as they register with various social networking sites, credit monitoring services, and other online platforms.
Innovation Solution
A profile data management system that provides a central repository for user data, allowing users and secondary users to view, modify, and update profiles through a crowdsourcing model, where reliability indices are calculated based on factors like credibility and quality of inputs, and access is granted based on membership levels and credit earned.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users manually enter profile information for each online service, then the profile data can be customized for each service, but the user's time and effort are significantly increased and the same information must be entered multiple times
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple profile data entries across different online services into a single centralized profile. The system automatically aggregates profile information from various sources (social networking sites, professional networks, personal websites) and merges them into one unified profile that can be accessed and updated centrally, eliminating the need to manually enter the same information multiple times.
Solution Approach 2:
The unified profile system serves multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as a centralized storage for all profile data, an automatic updater across multiple services, a verification hub using reliability indices, and a source for generating service-specific profiles. This multi-functional approach replaces multiple separate profile management systems.
2Adaptability or versatility
If users register with multiple online services, then more services are accessible, but the profile data becomes disorganized and incongruent across different platforms
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where profile data is continuously verified and updated based on reliability indices. The centralized profile monitors changes across multiple services and automatically adjusts the master profile based on verified information, ensuring consistency. The system provides feedback to users about data quality and sources, allowing them to maintain accurate profile information across all services.
3Loss of information
If profile information is stored across multiple distributed systems, then data availability is improved, but the risk of information loss and inconsistency increases
Solution Approach 1:
The centralized profile system acts as an intermediary between multiple online services and the user's master profile. It collects, verifies, and standardizes data from various sources before storing it in the unified profile. The system mediates between distributed data sources and the user, ensuring that only verified and reliable information is incorporated into the master profile, thus maintaining both availability and accuracy.
4Quantity of substance
If third-party users can submit updates to profiles, then profile completeness is improved, but the reliability of the submitted information becomes difficult to verify
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual verification of third-party submissions with an automated reliability index system. The system uses algorithms to assess the credibility of submitted information based on multiple factors including the submitter's history, the consistency with existing verified data, and the quality of sources. This automated system substitutes for manual verification processes and provides objective reliability measurements for all profile data.
Data Source
AI summary
In an embodiment, a profile data management system provides a central repository for data and information associated with a user. The information may be presented through an electronic user interface as a profile of the user. In an embodiment, the profile data management system maintains profiles for many users and enables users and/or secondary users to submit information and to modify the user profiles. Modifications are made to user profiles when the submitted information is sufficiently reliable. In general, the method of building and modifying profiles in the profile data management system based on the contributions of many users may be referred to as crowdsourcing profiles. Crowdsourcing profiles may advantageously enable the generation and verification of large amounts of data related to many individuals. The crowdsourcing profiles model allows secondary users to provide updates, modifications, comments, ratings, preferences, and/or other inputs to the profile data management system. Crowdsourcing profiles may advantageously reduce redundant profile management efforts by generating and/or updating profile data based on data that is reported as reliable by one or more users.