{
  "patent_number": "US 8843528",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Social Networks Automatically Create Groups Based on Time and Place",
  "original_title": "Query-based user groups in social networks",
  "summary": "Google's patent describes a system that automatically groups social media users together based on where they are or when they are posting, allowing for instant, context-aware content sharing.",
  "what_it_does": "The system monitors the posts you make on a social network, specifically looking for location data (like a GPS coordinate) or temporal data (like a timestamp). When you create a post, the system automatically generates a query to find other users who share that same location or time context. It then creates a temporary 'social circle'—a distribution list—that includes these people, allowing you to share your post specifically with them. For example, if you post a photo at a music festival, the system identifies other users at that same venue and time, grouping them so your post reaches people who are actually there.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover manual group creation where a user explicitly selects friends from a list.",
    "Does not cover content distribution based solely on pre-existing social graph connections like 'friends' or 'followers'.",
    "Does not cover systems that rely on static user profile attributes like age, gender, or interests rather than dynamic temporal or location data."
  ],
  "filed": "2013-10-25",
  "granted": "2014-09-23",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "Google LLC",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/google-llc",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Ana Maria Ulin Vazquez",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/ana-maria-ulin-vazquez"
    },
    {
      "name": "Reza Behforooz",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/reza-behforooz"
    },
    {
      "name": "Charles Mendis",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/charles-mendis"
    },
    {
      "name": "George Baggott",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/george-baggott"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 6,
  "tags": [
    "software",
    "ai_ml",
    "consumer_electronics"
  ],
  "abstract": "Implementations of the present disclosure include obtaining one or more queries, processing data stored in a data store based on at least one query of the one or more queries to identify a plurality of users, the plurality of users sharing a commonality that is a subject of the at least one query, generating one or more query-based social circles, the plurality of users populating a query-based social circle of the one or more query-based social circles, the query-based social circle being directed to the commonality and defining a distribution list for distributing digital content provided by one or more users of the plurality of users, and transmitting social circle data corresponding to the query-based social circle to display a representation of the query-based social circle to at least one user of the plurality of users.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8843528/facebook-groups",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/8843528/facebook-groups/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US8843528",
  "relatedPatents": []
}