Virtual Persona Identity Segmentation for Social Networking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional social-networking applications fail to allow users to tailor their online behavior based on real-world relationships, leading to difficulties in managing different social identities and sharing appropriate content with various groups.
Innovation Solution
The system enables users to create virtual personas representing different real-life roles, allowing them to control their online interactions and content sharing within social-networking applications, ensuring that specific content is shared with or concealed from particular groups based on their relationships.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If users share content with all connections in conventional social-networking applications, then content visibility is maximized, but users lose control over who sees specific types of content
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments a user's social-networking identity into multiple virtual personas, each representing different real-life roles (e.g., professional, personal, academic). Each persona can have its own content sharing settings, allowing users to control which connections see specific content types based on the persona context.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces virtual personas as intermediary layers between the user's real identity and their connections. These personas act as mediators that enable selective content sharing without requiring users to manage complex permission settings for each individual connection.
2Adaptability or versatility
If users create multiple separate accounts to represent different roles, then content sharing control is improved, but system complexity and management burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple virtual personas under a single social-networking account, allowing users to maintain different roles and content sharing preferences without creating separate accounts. The system combines the functionality of multiple accounts while simplifying management through a unified interface.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent makes a single social-networking account universal by enabling it to represent multiple roles and contexts through virtual personas. Each persona can be activated based on the interaction context, allowing the account to serve multiple functions simultaneously.
3Adaptability or versatility
If users conceal content from certain groups, then privacy control is improved, but content reach and visibility are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes content sharing dynamic by allowing users to selectively reveal or conceal content based on the virtual persona being used and the viewer's relationship to the user. The same content can be visible to some connections while concealed from others, with settings that adapt to different social contexts.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-implemented method for enabling users of social-networking applications to interact using virtual personas may include (1) creating a social-networking identity associated with a user of a social-networking application, (2) creating a plurality of virtual personas that represent different real-life roles of the user as part of the user's social-networking identity, (3) receiving a request to perform at least one networking action that implicates at least one of the user's virtual personas, and then (4) directing the social-networking application to perform the networking action such that the networking action implicates the user's virtual persona without implicating the user's entire social-networking identity. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.