JP3669167B2 - Information providing method and information providing apparatus using others group preference information, and recording medium recording information providing program - Google Patents

Description

[0001]
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an information providing method and an information providing apparatus that allow a user to select desired information and cause the user to receive the selected information. In particular, the present invention uses the information that the user makes a selection from items presented by the service provider, or that the user explicitly or implicitly presents information indicating the preference to the service provider. The present invention relates to an information providing method and an information providing apparatus for providing information determined to be appropriate by a service provider to a user.
[0002]
[Prior art]
For example, in the above information providing method and information providing apparatus, when a user who enjoys a certain type of information service claims that he / she is interested in information on a specific field, an item belonging to the specific field occurs Includes an information providing method and an information providing apparatus for notifying a user of information related to the item.
[0003]
In the case of a type of service in which a user designates a specific field and information in the specified specific field is provided to the user, the information is classified by the service provider or service operator. Distributed to users. When the user specifies a keyword instead of specifying a specific field, the service provider searches for information based on the specified keyword, or is specified by the user by referring to the related information database related to the keyword. The category corresponding to the keyword is determined, and information belonging to the category is provided to the user.
[0004]
In addition, in the case of a type of service where the user does not explicitly specify a specific field, the user's usage status is analyzed and identified from data acquired for each user, such as a user handling log. Methods for estimating the field are known.
Furthermore, when a certain user (for example, user A) is interested in some information, the interest information of the user A is compared with the interest information of other users, and the interest similar to the user A There is known a method of searching for another user B having a difference, generating a difference between interest information of the user A and the user B, and providing the user with the information using the generated difference information.
[0005]
More specifically, a technique for selecting information useful for the user from a vast amount of main information (contents, Web pages, etc.) in a service that provides information to the user through the WWW, e-mail service, etc. has been desired. It is rare. As one of the technologies, a technology for selecting main information based on user's preference is, for example, Tachibanataka et al., “Proposal and Evaluation of Personalized Service Method for News Articles”, Information Processing Society of Japan 86th Multimedia Communication and Distributed Processing Study Group, 1998.
[0006]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
The conventional information providing method as described above is based on preference information presented by an individual. However, in most cases, users do not present all the items they are interested in to the service provider, and they are potentially interested or not so strong but interested. It is difficult to present information about matters that have
[0007]
As an example, users may be interested in soccer information that they are not usually interested in, but if it is big news like the World Cup, or news that many people are interested in. You may be interested in information that your close acquaintances are interested in. In such a situation, the conventional method of providing information based on the preference information presented by the individual user cannot provide useful information for the user.
[0008]
In addition, in the case of the conventional method of providing information based on the closeness of interest between users, the preference information of users who have similar similar interests is used. It is not possible to provide users with information about specific interests.
In view of the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention selects useful information for a user from an enormous amount of information (hereinafter referred to as main information) using the preferences of other groups and provides the user with the information. An information providing method and apparatus, and a recording medium on which an information providing program is recorded are proposed.
[0009]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to solve the above-described problems, according to the present invention, an information providing method and apparatus for providing main information selected according to the preference of a member of a specific group to a user is realized.
FIG. 1 is a diagram for explaining the principle of the present invention. As shown in the figure, the present invention provides at least one user group including users having user profile information that matches a specific condition from among users whose user profile information is stored in a storage device. Are created (step 10), and the user group having a large number of users belonging to the user group is selected as an upper group from the created user groups (step 12), and the users held in the storage device are selected. The information related to the users belonging to the selected upper group is created from the provided information to be provided to (step 14), and at least a part of the created information is selected and selected. Information is sent to the user (step 16).
[0010]
As described above, according to the present invention, information related to the users belonging to the upper group is sent to the users who do not belong to the selected upper group. Since the information that is not related to the user is sent, it is possible to receive useful information that cannot be enjoyed when only the information related to the user is provided. Also, since the information sent to the users is narrowed down to the information related to the users belonging to the selected upper group, an undesirable situation in which a large amount of unnecessary information is sent is avoided. .
[0011]
FIG. 2 is an operation flowchart of the information providing method of the present invention. According to the information providing method of the present invention, when the selected information is sent to the user, it is determined whether or not a predetermined timing has been reached (step 20), and the information is displayed when the predetermined timing is reached. By selecting (step 22), sending information to the user (step 24), and repeating steps 20 to 24 until the information related to the users belonging to the selected upper group is completely transmitted (step 26). Sequentially send different information to users.
[0012]
FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the information providing apparatus of the present invention. Information providing device
A first storage device 100 that holds user profile information;
A second storage device 200 that holds user-provided information;
A user profile information management unit 110 that captures the user profile information into the first storage device 100;
A user-provided information management unit 210 that captures the user-provided information into the second storage device 200;
A processing device 300 for selecting information to be sent to the user;
And an information sending device 80 for sending the selected information to the user.
[0013]
The processing apparatus 300 includes:
Group group creating means 10 for creating at least one user group including users whose user profile information held in the first storage device 100 matches a specific condition;
A group group selecting means 20 for selecting a user group having a large number of users belonging to the user group among the created user groups as an upper group;
Upper group information creating means 30 for creating information related to users belonging to the selected upper group from the provided information held in the second storage device 200;
Transmission group selection means 40 that selects at least a part of the created information as information to be transmitted to the user and transmits it to the information sending device 80 in accordance with a predetermined timing.
[0014]
Note that the first storage device 100 and the second storage device 200 can be configured in various forms such as a memory, an external storage device, or an information server connected via a network. There is a need.
FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram of an information providing method using the preference of another person group. When realizing an information provision method that uses the preference of another person group, it is important to extract a group for selecting useful main information. Therefore, the information providing method using the preference of others group according to the present invention includes the following steps.
[0015]
In the group group creation stage, a large number of groups, that is, group groups, are created by repeatedly creating a group with users who meet certain conditions based on profile information of all users while changing the conditions. To do.
In the group group selection stage, groups are extracted from the created group group until a certain condition is reached in the descending order of the number of members, and the upper group group is selected.
[0016]
In the main information generation stage of the upper group group, member preference information is extracted for each group in the upper group group, and main information is selected according to a certain algorithm using the extracted preference information group of each group. .
Finally, in the sending group selection step, group A is selected one by one from the upper group according to certain conditions, and the main information of the selected group A is sent to all users.
[0017]
The sending of the group A main information to all users may be repeated at certain time intervals or at certain timings.
The present invention is also an information providing method in an information providing apparatus comprising a user profile management mechanism capable of holding user preference information and a provision information management mechanism capable of holding information to be provided to a user,
Create at least one group that includes users with certain characteristics from users,
A group with a large number of users belonging to the group is extracted from the group, and the user preference information regarding the users belonging to the extracted group is used to select information to be provided to the user,
A part of the selected information is sent to the user after an appropriate time.
[0018]
The present invention is also a group group creation stage for creating a group group including at least one group by creating a group including users who meet a predetermined condition based on the profile information of the user,
A group group selection step of extracting a group from the created group group until a predetermined condition is reached in descending order of the number of members, and selecting an upper group group,
For each group in the upper group group, the member preference information is extracted, and the main information of the upper group group that selects the main information to be provided to the user using the extracted group preference information The creation stage,
A method for providing information using other group preference information, comprising: selecting a group one by one from an upper group according to a predetermined condition, and a sending group selection step of sending the main information of the selected group to a user. .
[0019]
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 5 is a configuration diagram of an information providing system in which the present invention is realized. In an information providing system according to an embodiment of the present invention, a user terminal 600 is connected to an information providing server 400 via a network 500 such as the Internet, and the information providing server 400 is useful for the user terminal 500. Information is provided.
[0020]
The information providing server 400 can be configured by a general computer including a CPU 430, a memory 440, an input / output device 450, and a communication interface 420 connected via a bus 470, for example. The communication interface 420 communicates with the user terminal 600 via the network 500.
In addition, the information providing server 400 holds a module that realizes an information providing method using the preference of others group according to the present invention, for example, an information providing program storage unit 410 for storing a program, and user profile information. And a user-provided information storage device 200 that holds information to be provided to the user. The information provision program storage unit 410 is developed with a program including a group group creation unit, a group group selection unit, a main group creation unit for a higher level group, and a transmission group selection unit in order to realize an information provision service. .
[0021]
Also included is a timer device 460 that is used for time measurement in order to send main information to the user at predetermined timings or at predetermined time intervals.
The service according to the first embodiment of the information providing method using the preference of the other person group according to the present invention is a service for performing a search using a registered keyword and distributing the search result to the user by e-mail.
[0022]
The user, for example, from the user terminal 600, the basic information including the address, such as age, gender, and prefecture name, and the preference information including the keyword that interests the user profile information on the information providing server 400 side. register. FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of user profile information relating to 10,000 users, for example. The user can receive the main information searched with the individually registered keyword from the information providing server. In the first embodiment of the present invention, for example, it is assumed that television program information is provided.
[0023]
In the first embodiment of the present invention, a case where age sex is used as a condition for creating a group in the group creation stage is considered. FIG. 7 is a diagram showing 12 groups created according to age and gender, that is, group groups.
Next, in the group group selection stage, only the groups satisfying the selection condition are selected from the created group group using the minimum number of members belonging to the group as the selection condition, and the remaining groups are deleted. FIG. 8 shows seven groups selected from the first embodiment of the present invention.
[0024]
Next, in the main information creation stage of the upper group group, for each group, the main information is searched from the keywords registered in the user profile information by members belonging to each group, that is, the user, and the searched main information is For example, the top five main information is set as the other group preference main information regarding the group in the order of the collected frequency.
[0025]
More specifically, referring to the user profile information of members belonging to each group for each of the seven groups selected in the group group selection stage, how many members are designated as keywords for each keyword of interest. Create a list with points indicating whether you are doing. Subsequently, in the TV program information that is the provided information, a TV program that matches each keyword is picked up, and the number of times picked up for each TV program is given as the number of registered points. One keyword may be associated with a plurality of television programs, and a plurality of keywords may be associated with the same television program. Then, for each selected group, high-order group information in which television program information is arranged in descending order of registration number points is created. FIG. 9 is a diagram showing provided information according to the first embodiment of the present invention, and FIGS. 10A and 10B show a list with points indicating the number of members for each keyword of each group. FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a list in which TV programs are arranged in order of the registration points for each selected group. For example, the five TV program information in the descending order of the registration points for each group is the other group preference main information regarding the group.
[0026]
Finally, in the transmission group selection stage, for example, every day, for example, five groups are selected from the upper group group, and a link to the other group preference information about the selected group is sent to the user by e-mail. To distribute. The user to whom the e-mail is distributed can easily obtain the main information itself from the link to the main information.
[0027]
Or, instead of distributing links to other group preference information about five groups at the same time, for example, at the sending group selection stage, select one group from the upper group group and use it for e-mail After a certain amount of time has elapsed using a timer device, a different group is selected from the upper group group, and a link to other group preference information about the other group is sent to the user via e-mail. The process of distributing to may be repeated sequentially, for example, five times.
[0028]
Next, a second embodiment of the present invention using a keyword registered as a condition for creating a group in the group group creation stage will be described. Assume that the user profile information in this example is the same as the user profile information shown in FIG. 5 used in the description of the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 12 is a diagram showing groups created by keywords.
[0029]
Next, in the group group selection stage, only the groups satisfying the selection condition are selected from the created group group using the minimum number of members belonging to the group as the selection condition, and the remaining groups are deleted. FIG. 13 shows four groups selected from the second embodiment of the present invention.
Next, in the main information creation stage of the upper group group, for each group, the main information is searched from the keywords registered in the user profile information by members belonging to each group, that is, the user, and the searched main information is For example, the top five main information is set as the other group preference main information regarding the group in the order of the collected frequency.
[0030]
More specifically, referring to the user profile information of members belonging to each group for each of the seven groups selected in the group group selection stage, how many members are designated as keywords for each keyword of interest. Create a list with points indicating whether you are doing. Subsequently, in the TV program information that is the provided information, a TV program that matches each keyword is picked up, and the number of times picked up for each TV program is given as the number of registered points. One keyword may be associated with a plurality of television programs, and a plurality of keywords may be associated with the same television program. Then, for each selected group, high-order group information in which television program information is arranged in descending order of registration number points is created. The provision information according to the second embodiment of the present invention is the same as the provision information according to the first embodiment of the present invention shown in FIG.
[0031]
FIGS. 13A and 13B are diagrams showing a list with points indicating the number of members for each keyword of each group according to the second embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. It is a figure which shows the list in which the television program was arranged for every registration point number for every. For example, the five TV program information in the descending order of the registration points for each group is the other group preference main information regarding the group.
[0032]
In the transmission group selection step, for example, every day, for example, two groups are selected from the upper group group, and a link to other group preference information about the selected group is distributed to the user by e-mail. The user to whom the e-mail is distributed can easily obtain the main information itself from the link to the main information. Further, after a certain period of time, two groups are selected in the same manner, and a link to the other group preference main information regarding the selected group is distributed to the user by e-mail.
[0033]
The users to whom the electronic mail is distributed may be all users of the information providing system, or may be users selected according to certain conditions from all users. For example, it is also possible to selectively limit users to whom e-mails are distributed by referring to user information registered in the user profile information and imposing restrictions based on age and conditions depending on residential areas. .
[0034]
In addition, the configuration of the information providing system using the other person group preference information is not limited to the example described in the above embodiment, and each component of the information providing system is configured by software (program), It can be stored in a disk device or the like, and installed in a computer of an information providing system as needed to search and tabulate tabular data. Furthermore, the constructed program can be stored in a portable recording medium such as a floppy disk or a CD-ROM, and can be used for general purposes when using such a system.
[0035]
The present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and various modifications and applications can be made within the scope of the claims.
[0036]
【The invention's effect】
As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible for a user to enjoy useful information that is separate from his / her preference and useful information regarding matters that he / she is not usually interested in from an information providing service. Become. In addition, the information providing service side can provide useful information to users who have not been interested in so far, thereby attracting new users to the information.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of an information providing method according to the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a configuration diagram of an information providing apparatus according to the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram of an information providing method using a preference of another person group according to the present invention.
FIG. 5 is a configuration diagram of an information providing system according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating an example of user profile information.
FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram of a group group created according to the first embodiment of this invention.
FIG. 8 is an explanatory diagram of a group group selected according to the first embodiment of this invention.
FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example of provided information according to the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a list with points for each keyword of each group according to the first embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 11 is a diagram showing upper group information according to the first embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 12 is an explanatory diagram of groups selected according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of provided information according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 14 is a diagram showing a list with points for each keyword of each group according to the second embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 15 is a diagram showing upper group information according to the second embodiment of the present invention.
[Explanation of symbols]
100 User profile information 200 User-provided information

Claims (6)

In the information provision method in which the server transmits the provision information stored in the storage device of the server to the user terminal of the user via the communication network.
The server extracts user profile information that matches a specific condition from the user profile information of a plurality of users stored in the storage device, thereby obtaining a user group group including at least one user group. A creation step to create,
An extraction step in which the server extracts, as a higher group, a user group in which the number of users belonging to the user group is equal to or more than a predetermined minimum number of users in the created user group group;
The server extracts information related to the user profile information of the users belonging to the extracted upper group from the provided information stored in the storage device, and extracts a part of the extracted information. Selective transmission that selects based on a predetermined condition and transmits the selected information to a user terminal that includes a user terminal other than the user terminal of the user belonging to the upper group as a transmission target via a communication network. An information providing method comprising the steps of: The selective transmission step is
Determining whether the server has reached a predetermined timing using a timer device provided in the server;
The server selects information when a predetermined timing is reached;
A server sending selected information to a user terminal;
2. The information provision according to claim 1, further comprising: a step in which the server repeats the determination step, the selection step, and the transmission step until the information related to the user profile information of the users belonging to the upper group is completely transmitted. Method. An information providing device that transmits information to a user terminal via a communication network,
A group group that creates a user group group including at least one user group by extracting user profile information that matches a specific condition from the user profile information held in the storage device of the information providing apparatus. Creating means;
A group group selection means for extracting, as a higher group, a user group in which the number of users belonging to the user group is equal to or more than a predetermined minimum number of users in the created user group group;
Upper group information creating means for extracting information related to user profile information of users belonging to the extracted upper group from the provided information stored in the storage device;
A user terminal that selects a part of the extracted information based on a predetermined condition and includes the selected information as a transmission target for a user terminal other than a user terminal of a user belonging to the upper group. And a selective transmission means for transmitting via a communication network. The selective transmission means is
A determination unit that determines whether or not a predetermined timing has been reached using a timer device provided in the information providing device;
Selection means for selecting information when it is detected by the determination means that the predetermined timing has been reached;
A transmission means for transmitting the selected information to the user terminal;
The control means for causing the determination means, the selection means, and the transmission means to repeat the processing until the information related to the user profile information of the users belonging to the extracted upper group is completely transmitted. Information providing device. A computer-readable recording medium recording a program that causes a computer including network communication means to function as an information providing apparatus that transmits information to a user terminal via a communication network,
Group group creating means for creating a user group group including at least one user group by extracting user profile information matching a specific condition from the user profile information held in the storage device of the computer ,
A group group selection means for extracting, as a higher group, a user group in which the number of users belonging to the user group is equal to or greater than a predetermined minimum number of users in the created user group group;
Upper group information creating means for extracting information related to user profile information of users belonging to the extracted upper group from the provided information stored in the storage device;
A user terminal that selects a part of the extracted information based on a predetermined condition and includes the selected information as a transmission target for a user terminal other than a user terminal of a user belonging to the upper group. Selective transmission means for transmitting via a communication network,
A computer-readable recording medium storing a program that functions as a computer . The selective transmission means includes
A determination means for determining whether or not a predetermined timing has been reached using the timer device of the computer;
Selection means for selecting information when it is detected by the determination means that the predetermined timing has been reached;
A transmission means for transmitting the selected information to the user terminal;
6. The control unit according to claim 5, further comprising: a determination unit, a selection unit, and a control unit that causes the transmission unit to repeat the process until information related to the extracted user profile information of a user belonging to the upper group is exhausted. A computer-readable recording medium on which a program is recorded .

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