Yahoo! Inc.

Excalibur Ip, LLC

Sococo, Inc.

Communities.com

Oath Inc.

F Randall Farmer

Ellen Sue Perelman

Mark Hull

Neal J Sample

Paul J Brody

Chip Morningstar

David M Van Wie

Matthew Leacock

Robert J Butler

Mohammad Mohsenzadeh

Jonathan James Trevor

Edward Ho

Michael Lee Quoc

Matthew Fukuda

Dan Wascovich

E Stanley Ott, Iv

Michael La Rotonda

Miles Libbey

Bryce Glass

Ericson DeJesus

Charles B Morningstar

Apparatus and methods of managing a virtual area based on communicant capabilities are described. The communicant capabilities are updated based on rules in response to events in the virtual area. An action by one communicant can affect the capabilities of another communicant. Communicant capabilities can be stored in respective server-side proxies and the virtual area can be managed without transmitting any of the capabilities to the communicants' client network nodes. Capability-based permissions checks can be performed against communicant capabilities with wildcarded attribute fields.

Capabilities based management of virtual areas

Apparatus and methods of managing a virtual area based on communicant capabilities are described. The communicant capabilities are updated based on rules in response to events in the virtual area. An action by one communicant can affect the capabilities of another communicant. Communicant capabilities can be stored in respective server-side proxies and the virtual area can be managed without transmitting any of the capabilities to the communicants' client nodes. Capability-based permissions checks can be performed against communicant capabilities with wildcarded attribute fields.

Enabling an authenticated user to access content associated with an authenticated user as though the authenticated user had a selected user relationship with the authenticated user. The user relationship may comprise a relationship degree, a relationship category, a relationship rating, and/or the like. An invitation to join an electronic service, such as an online social network, is sent to the unauthenticated user at an address known to the authenticated user. The invitation includes a time-limited token, such as a URL, that includes an invitation identifier, which relates the invitation to the authenticated user content. The token may be encrypted in the invitation. The unauthenticated user returns the token as a request to preview the authenticated user content without first becoming an authenticated user of the electronic service. If the token is still valid, access is granted. The unauthenticated user may also request to establish a connection with the authenticated user.

Control for inviting an unauthenticated user to gain access to display of content that is otherwise accessible with an authentication mechanism

A real-time asynchronous event aggregation system, method, and network device are configured to capture real-time asynchronous events, and to pass them as input to one or more aggregation engines to determine a reputation for a target. The aggregation engine(s) may then send out notifications where a reputation category changes for a target, indicating that an action may be taken to inhibit spam messages from the target, highlight a display of content from the target, or the like. As such, the event-driven aggregation engines may be designed to capture real-time asynchronous events, such as reputation reports for a wide variety of activities, including, but not limited to spam and/or not-spam messages, determining a reputation on a posting of comments to a movie, a blog posting, a play list posting, or the like. In one embodiment, a reputation of the sender of the reputation event may also be determined.

Real-time asynchronous event aggregation systems

A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards seeding a user's contacts for their online social network. The invention is arranged to automatically recommend to the user a set of seed contacts that the user may employ to invite to join their social network. The set of seed contacts may be harvested from the user's existing portal activities, as well as other sources. In one embodiment, the invention analyzes portal activity, such as email exchanges with the user, and the like, to determine a frequency of contact with the user. Other sources may include but not be limited to emails, names within an address book of the user, names within an address book of another person, a buddy list, an instant messaging list, an activity, a mailing list, an online discussion group, a membership in a category, chat group, and the like.

Computerized method and system for establishing a network connection based on a contact list automatically seeded from network behavioral analysis of a user

Social network for providing recommendations for items of interest

Social network for reciprocal data sharing

Social network with multiple logins

Social network with field level control of data exposure

A device, system, and method are directed towards enabling a user to disambiguate an identity of a member included in a user's social network (USN), and towards enabling an operation to be performed based on information about the member. The USN is determined. The NID of the member is received. If the NID is non-unique within the USN, member distinctions are determined for members in the USN who are associated with the same NID. The member distinctions are sent to the user. The user makes a selection of one of the members associated with one of the member distinctions. Based on the selection, information about the selected member is received. The operation is enabled to be performed based on the information about the selected member. The operation may include addressing the selected member, enabling a communication between the user and the selected member, or the like.

Social namespace addressing for non-unique identifiers

A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards making a user's online portal information available to members of an online social network. Portal information can include information entered by the user and information determined based on the user's online behaviors, such as frequenting a Web site, sending spam messages, and the like. The online social network enables multiple degrees of relationships among members of the online social network. At least a portion of the portal information is made accessible to at least some of the members of the online social network who have a relationship to the user. The relationship can be through a public activity available to all members and/or through a user-defined category of members, such as family, friends, business contacts, and the like. The portal information can be used to determine which relationships will be established and/or which information will be available to members.

Method and system for sharing portal subscriber information in an online social network

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

F Randall Farmer