Yahoo! Inc.

Excalibur Ip, LLC

R2 Solutions, LLC

Marc Bishop

Stephen Joseph Miller

Vincent Sollicito

Ashit Gandhi

Derrick Wang Whittle

Tracy Hsu

Methods and apparatus for providing an advertisement in a sidebar, and/or in a slidesheet associated with an application module displayed in the sidebar. The advertisement is targeted to the sidebar user based upon user specific information maintained by a content provider. The user specific information can comprise, sidebar application information, user preference information, shared user information and other information associated with the user that can be used to select an advertisement targeted to the user. An advertisement displayed in a slidesheet can be selected based upon user information and/or the functionality provided by the application module associated with the slidesheet.

Targeted sidebar advertising

Email functions, such as, for example, reply, reply to all, forward, delete, mark as unread, and mark as spam are made accessible to a user through a browser independent sidebar. In one embodiment, email messages stored by an email service provider comprise a first identifier used by a first email retrieval client and a second identifier used by the sidebar. In one embodiment, a protocol used by the sidebar to retrieve messages is augmented to comprise the first identifier, so that the sidebar can use email functions, such as, for example, mark as spam, that identify messages using the first identifier.

Sidebar email

Members of Internet community websites, such as for example, social networking sites, photo sharing sites, review site, and other community sites, regularly make updates to the websites. Therefore a member of those sites is constantly checking those sites for new updates. In one embodiment, an application module of a sidebar provides an indicator, such as, for example, a new item in the application module, to the sidebar user when an update is made to a community website by another member of the site.

Community information updates in a sidebar

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Marc Bishop