Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Muhammad Aatif Awan

Yang Zhou

Sanaz Ahari

Samir Mavji Shah

Nitin Agrawal

Milad Shokouhi

Arulkumar Elumalai

Filip Andrzej Radlinski

Nick Craswell

Lili Wu

Timothy C Hoad

Vinit Deshpande

Manas S Khadilkar

Haifeng Ji

Peter B Rusev

Song Zhou

Erica M Lockheimer

Bodo Billerbeck

When a user of a social network accepts an invitation message to connect with another user of the social network, a system may use a history of user activity to determine where the user is subsequently directed within the social-network website. In particular, based on the history of user activity associated with an in-network page with recommendations for possible connections for the user within the network of users, the system may determine whether or not there have been too many impressions of the in-network page. If not, the system may present the in-network page with a recommendation for a possible in-network connection for the user within the network of users. Then, if the system receives a user selection of the possible in-network connection, the system may provide an invitation message inviting the possible in-network connection to connect with the user by activating a link in the invitation message.

User-specific and user-activity-based routing within a website

A system and method are provided for detecting entity information contained within search results. The detected entity information can be used to determine a category of entity as well as a specific entity within the search results. Entity information can be extracted from the documents associated with the search results. This information can be used as part of the information for an entity card, which can be displayed to a user in conjunction with and/or in place of the search results.

Entity detection and extraction for entity cards

Conversations between two parties are seamlessly and transparently escalated into a conversation between multi-parties with minimal user interaction. If the two initial parties are joined to a central focus and a media, a third or more participant is invited to join the conversation. If either of the two initial parties fails to join the focus or media, the original conversation is restored and the attempt to escalate to a conference is abandoned.

Escalation from a conversation to a conference

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Muhammad Aatif Awan