Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael Joshua Aft

Shaunak Chatterjee

Mark Hull

Birjodh S Tiwana

Kinjal Basu

Siva Visakan Sooriyan

Jesse Jyh-Cherng Hsia

Sammy Shreibati

Haiyang Liu

Vivian Mak Urata

Described herein is a contextual contact recommendation or suggestion service and system. The service, which, in some embodiments, is integrated with a social networking service and/or an instant messaging service, takes as input a first parameter that identifies a member of the social networking service, and a second parameter that defines a context (e.g., a web page that is being viewed by the member. The service, based in part on the context, computes a ranked list of members to populate a contextual contact list, thereby recommending or suggesting contacts, with whom the member might be interested in initiating, or continuing, a conversation, based on the context of the member's current web browsing session. Optionally, the service may take as input a third parameter, defining a use case, such that the recommendation algorithm can be customized by use case.

Techniques for presenting a contextual contact list

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Redwood City, CA, United States of America

Michael Joshua Aft