Social media based preference determination and recommendation

NU 2012-187 

Inventors

Larry Birnbaum*

Shawn O'Banion 

Abstract

This technology utilizes social media data, specifically explicit linguistic expressions of preference, for preference determination and recommendation systems. It has been embodied in two public facing software systems to date: Tweetcast Your Vote, which predicted how people would vote in the 2012 presidential election from their Twitter posts, and BookRx, which similarly provides book recommendations based on Twitter data. 

Applications

• Automatic prediction
• Data mining from publicly available sources

Advantages

• Uses natural language on social media
• Overcomes proprietary nature of preference data

IP Status

US patent and PCT applications have been filed.