WO2013127673A1

WO2013127673A1 - A method and a system for managing users' social interactions network

Info

Publication number: WO2013127673A1
Application number: PCT/EP2013/053376
Authority: WO
Inventors: David MILLÁN RUIZ; Rafael PELLÓN GÓMEZ-CALCERRADA
Original assignee: Telefónica, S.A.
Priority date: 2012-02-29
Filing date: 2013-02-20
Publication date: 2013-09-06
Also published as: ES2429590A2; ES2429590B1; ES2429590R1

Abstract

The method comprising a server performing following steps: - acquiring and analysing information regarding at least social interactions between a user and several contacts, within different social networks, via different communication channels, which differ at least with respect to the telecommunication technologies and/or protocols they use, and - recommending to said user at least the most appropriate communication channel, out of said different communication channels, to communicate with a specific contact or group of contacts, out of said several contacts, based on the result of said information analysis, said result including at least previous interaction frequency and time periods for said social interactions. The system of the invention is arranged to implement the method of the invention.

Description

A Method and a System for managing users' social interactions network

Field of the art

The present invention generally relates, in a first aspect, to a method for managing users' social interactions network, said method by considering different sources of communication and characterising and categorising all the relationships a user holds with their contacts allowing to said user to easily manage all the relationships in a transparent manner.

A second aspect of the invention relates to a system arranged to implement the method of the first aspect.

Prior State of the Art

Nowadays, people may have a large number of contacts (couple, family, friends, acquaintances, partners, colleagues, club members, etc.) with whom they communicate with via different digital channels:

- Traditional channels like phone calls, SMS and MMS.

- Online Social Networks (Facebook, Google+, Tuenti, etc.) which are web-based social networking services that allow for the connection of people who share interests and activities across political, economic, and geographic borders.

- Voice over Internet Protocol that allows communications to use internet infrastructure.

Message Applications (WhatsApp, Viper, iMessage, ChatON, etc.) which are a new generation of applications to use smartphones as a chat terminal.

- Social Hubs Applications (Samsung Social Hub, Xobni, etc.) that are a new kind of applications to merge all the communications from different channels.

Smartphones are also changing the way people maintain their social relationships, because people can communicate with their contacts everywhere, every time (Blackberry applications, WhatsApp, Facebook Mobile, etc.), using new and advanced services.

Recently, many tools and applications to facilitate the use of social networks have appeared (G++, Lopia, Android's contact manager, Tree, Flock, RockMelt, etc), offering different capabilities. Let's go through some of those tools:

G++ is a browser extension (add-on) for Firefox and Chrome that turns Google+ into an integrated social media platform. Lopia is a full-fledged, feature-rich yet easy to use social network client written in JavaFX.

- Android has been doing some very interesting things with social networking contact integration.

- Tree provides you with the information about the person who most probably is the one you are looking for. When there are more profiles found, Tree gives you the option to view all profiles and select the right one.

Flock is a web browser specialised in providing social networking and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface.

- RockMelt is re-imagining the browser for how people use the web today by making it easy to stay in touch with friends, search online, and get updates from your favourite sites.

All these tools have something in common: they try to be the pivotal point where all the social networks intersect so that the final user can easily gather and manage all his contacts and the communications with them. This way, these tools attempt to unify and synchronise the contact lists, merge different networks into one timeline, cross network features, synchronise settings and manage all the networks as if they were a single one.

What these tools do not provide as compared to the present invention is a global understanding and management of all users' social interactions as well as their social circles. This global understanding allows the present invention to better identify the best channel of communication for a given message and make most of the conversations transparent to the final user. This obviously reduces the usage of multiple applications for digital communications. Existing solutions present one or more of the following problems and limitations:

Existing tools do not provide a global understanding of users' social circles: current tools just unify and synchronise the contact lists, merge different networks into one timeline, cross network features and /or synchronise settings. However, it would be useful to separate messages according to the social group they come from (e.g. business messages, friends' messages, etc.). Partial view of the users:

Lack of a unified view of the users as these different social networks are not actually unified but integrated in terms of events (posts, tags, etc.). Without a differentiation at a community level, it cannot automatically prioritise messages or distinguish which messages might be interesting to the user from those which are not. Having this overall view of social circles, the present invention could even categorise/typify each message or relationship between pairs of users.

- Social "hubs" do not characterise the relationships (type of relationship) according to the nature of the social interactions with that contact. In the best case, they use all your interactions with the contact to aggregate and show them.

Message applications usually have their own contacts so users can only communicate with people who have the same application installed. Lack of a universal messaging mechanism.

Non-transparent communication: Current applications cause that users are sometimes concerned with the selection of the right service or channel to communicate with each contact rather than with the content of the communication. Multiple applications are needed on the mobile.

Although there are other tools and applications to integrate the contact lists and message feeds generated by the users when interacting with other users through different digital channels, none of them helps users to analyse if their real social relations are as frequent as they desire to be with any other particular user regardless of the digital channel used for communication.

Problems with existing solutions

US2010010826 provides a method to calculate indicators that reflect real-life interactions between people considering heterogeneous communications (already addressed in the state of the art by many papers). However, it does not provide as the present invention does, a client-server architecture which allows: determining the relationships between users considering different data sources; characterising and categorising those relationships; a method to detect the social circles according to the categorisation; providing a unified view of the relationships and social circles and a contact manager for the users so that they can easily manage their social interactions in a transparent manner.

US2010293247 proposes a method to include transmitting and receiving communication in a non-social network. Although this patent gathers information from different sources, it differs from the present invention in many things. They do not provide a global view of the relationship with each contact; just gather all the communications in a common framework.

There are two more patents related to the present invention that refer to the detection of communities or social circles: US8010418 and WO2012004425. These two patents are focused on phone communications and the contact manager is limited to adding and removing contacts, rather than providing a framework like the present invention to communicate with the contacts transparently and independently of the communication channel.

US2009228296 and US7499965 use a notion of community, but this notion is geared towards grouping people with common interests and virtual communities.

US2009248434 relates customer transactions (behaviour) to the social relation (implicit and explicit communication) of customers (influence). This patent neither builds nor uses social community information.

US2009233629 links GPS location data and social networks, but using a list of friends explicitly defined by the user, and understanding the social group as the list of friends declared by the user.

Summary of the Invention

It is necessary to offer an alternative to the state of the art which covers the gaps found therein, particularly those related to the lack of proposals which allow the integration of multiple social networks from different data sources by using a unique and transparent solution for the user. On contrary to the known proposals, the present invention relates, in a first aspect, to a method for managing users' social interactions network, comprising a server performing the following steps:

- acquiring and analysing information regarding at least social interactions between a user and several contacts, within different social networks, via different communication channels, which differ at least with respect to the telecommunication technologies and/or protocols they use, and

- recommending to said user at least the most appropriate communication channel, out of said different communication channels, to communicate with a specific contact or group of contacts, out of said several contacts, based on the result of said information analysis, said result including at least previous interaction frequency and time periods for said social interactions.

Other embodiments of the method of the first aspect of the invention are described according to appended claims 2 to 10, and in a subsequent section related to the detailed description of several embodiments. A second aspect of the present invention concerns to a system adapted to implement the method of the first aspect. The system comprising a server and a user's terminal, wherein:

- said server is arranged for:

- recommending to said user, by providing recommendation information to said user's terminal, at least the most appropriate communication channel, out of said different communication channels, to communicate with a specific contact or group of contacts, out of said several contacts, based on the result of said information analysis, said result including at least previous interaction frequency and time periods for said social interactions;

and

- said user's terminal with a contact manager client application, configured to receive said recommendation information from said server , said user's terminal having computing capacity and phone and/or data communications capacity.

For an embodiment of the system of the second aspect of the invention said user's terminal includes a screen-framework displaying said information by the contact manager client application.

Brief Description of the Drawings

The previous and other advantages and features will be more fully understood from the following detailed description of embodiments, with reference to the attached, which must be considered in an illustrative and non-limiting manner, in which:

Figure 1 shows an embodiment of the general architecture of the present invention.

Figure 2 shows a detailed description of the steps that comprises the Contact

Processing Engine according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 3 shows the Group Communications By Type sub-block according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 4 shows the Split Data Into Time-slices Sub-block according to an embodiment of the present invention. Figure 5 shows the Aggregate Data In Relationships sub-block according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 6 shows an example of the matching of users id's from different social networks.

Figure 7 represents the emotional categories that can be calculated for the characterisation and categorisation of the relationship between the user and its contacts according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 8 shows an embodiment of the Global Contact View of the client application of the present invention.

Figure 9 shows an embodiment of the Detailed Contact View of the client application of the present invention.

Figure 10 shows an embodiment of the Active Chat View of the client application of the present invention.

Figure 1 1 shows the Active Chat View when the communication is interacted by a mobile device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description of Several Embodiments

The present invention is based on a client-server architecture as seen in Figure 1 , where the client can be a multiple device with computing capacity (e.g. mobile, web, desktop, etc.). The server receives the social interactions of a given user from multiple data sources, the preferences of the user and some commercial information. In the server, the contact processing engine processes and stores part of this information in the data stores for contacts and interactions. The server thus transfers the strength of the relationships; their type, the emotional category and other processed information to the client so that it can inject this information into the contact manager to provide the user with the required capabilities to transparently manage all the relationships he holds with his contacts.

To use this system, the user has to sign the opt-in terms & conditions to enable the system to process their interaction data stored in the server. Every day, the server processes the new interaction data among users & contacts and updates the statistics, trends and inferred information, if required. When the connection between client and server is not available, the information can be stored in the client until the connection is established again. The present invention does not only propose the architecture to merge different sources of communications but also provides an approach to understand and manage those social interactions by considering different sources of information.

The following are describing in detail each functional block of the architecture shown in Figure 1.

Server Application

The server firstly gathers all the contacts c_n (where n is the number of contacts) of a given user u, (where , can be any user), existing in different sources: mobile cell phone, online social networks, etc. If a contact q (where j can be any contact) interacts with user Ui from multiple sources, user u, has the capability to match (and merge) the multiple instances of q in the system in order to have a full interaction view of their relationship.

Contact Processing Engine

The contact processing engine is in charge of performing the data processing to provide the client application with all the required, inferred analytical data. This block has 5 sub-blocks as illustrated in Figure 2. The sub-blocks are explained in detail along this subsection.

Sub-block 1 : Calculation of weights

The first component of the contact processing engine measures the strength of each relationship for each data source (<user_i, contactj, data source_k>). It consists of 4 steps that are repeated for each relationship:

a) Group communications by type: Separates and groups those social interactions in line with their nature (posts, tags, pokes, calls, sms, mms, etc.) as shown in Figure 3.

b) Split data into time-slices: Once these communications have been grouped according to their type, the present invention has to separate this data in accordance with the period of time when they occurred (time-frames) as shown in Figure 4. E.g. Weekly, monthly, etc.

c) Aggregate data in relationships: Aggregates each type of communications which have been grouped by time-slices for each relationship taking into account the directionality of those social interactions. E.g. a user "A" calls another user "B" twice during a given time-slice and posts once on "B"'s walls while "B" calls "A" three times (callsA-B=2; PostsA-B=1 ; callsB-A=3). Figure 5 shows an example of such interactions considering the directionality of the communications from a user "A" to a user "B". d) Calculate the weight of the relationship on each network: Calculates the strength of the relationship between each two users according to the types of communications and the intensity and stability of the relationship. The present invention calculates the strength of the relationship between each two users for different types of social networks (phone-based SN and OSN). This way, phone communications are weighted as indicated hereafter. The weight calculation currently used sums up all communications in the period (Calls A→B + SMS A→B + MMS A→B), divided by a configurable threshold:

weighty =

Y,_a→0(at * calls + β + sms + S + mms) + ^"∑,_D→c(at + calls + fi + sms + S + mms)

threshold

= v.<eight_b

Where α,β and δ are coefficients to weight each term of the formula (α+β+δ=1 ).

A second attribute associated to every relation in the social network is the link direction:

∑„_κ,(ΰτ * calls + β * sms + S * mms)

a^,b ∑_0→b(c£r * alls + β * sms + § * mms) + _tb→ a * calls + β * sms + δ * mms)

= 1 - dir _ia

These communications may have different weights. To calculate those weights ( α, β and δ), the present invention must gauge the correlation between each type of communication and the strength given by the people being polled. This way, the present invention can set more relevance to certain types of phone interactions. It is suggested to equally weight each term if no further information is given. Besides, it may also want to incorporate other communications such chats (Blackberry messenger, Whatsapp, etc.).

The communications over time are weighted like so:

weigM_Pbtmg = weighty * j_t + weig ty * f, # weighty * y_m where r_±, y_m correspond to the m time slices the present invention has considered.

Until now, the present invention has considered the phone communications but it also needs to define an analogous weight for OSN. The communications of the OSN may have many types of social interactions. The present invention will summarize the most relevant ones which are almost in all of them. The features that the invention has taken into account to define the strength of the link on the OSNs are the ones listed below:

Name Type Comment

Source (A) String Token/Id of the source

Destination (B) String Token/Id of the destination

Posts A^B Integer Number of posts from A to B during the

period

Posts B^A Integer Number of posts from B to A during the

period

Tags A-»B Integer Number of tags from A to B during the period

Tags B-»A Integer Number of tags from B to A during the period

Comments Integer Number of comments from A to B during the

A^B period

Comments Integer Number of comments from B to A during the

B^A period

Mikes A^B Integer Number of Mikes from A to B during the

period

Mikes B^A Integer Number of Mikes from B to A during the

period

Messages Integer Number of messages from A to B during the

A^B period

Messages Integer Number of messages from B to A during the

B^A period

Buzzes A->B Integer Number of buzzes from A to B during the

period

Buzzes B->A Integer Number of buzzes from B to A during the

period

Invitations Integer Number of invitations from A to B during the

A^B period

Invitations Integer Number of invitations from B to A during the B^A period

Notes A^B Integer Number of invitations from A to B during the period

Notes B^A Integer Number of invitations from B to A during the period

At this point, the present invention has considered all the possible social interactions on OSN as equally relevant (same weight in the formula):

However, it can also weight each type of communication by setting a coefficient for each term according to the preferences of the user or by correlating each term with the strength of the relationship.

A second attribute associated to every relation in the social network is the link directionality:

∑_0→i(pOsts + comments +— + invitations) _ _ dir.

X_E→fJ(posts + comments +^■·^■ + invitations) +∑_b→Q(posts + comments +— h invitations)

= 1 - d ir_iiC

Finally, for each OSN, it has to take into account that data is split in time slices. This way, the communications over time on each OSN are weighted like so:

weight_0Sft-i = weig _nl * γ_ί + weighty *y, +- weigh y *y_m where, fi, Ym correspond to the m time slices the present invention has considered. Sub-block 2: Matching the Users from Different Social Networks

The key functionality of this module consists in mapping and merging the id's of the users who belong to each online social network (Figure 6). If we want to consider the phone-based SN, the present invention also needs the connection between the phone number and the ID on each OSN. E.g. Phone number "677 777 777" corresponds to the user "John McMillan" on Facebook.

This block is not innovative as there is a vast variety of tools and techniques to match the id's of the users who belong to the different social networks. To achieve this, the user has to sign the opt-in terms & conditions to enable the system to process their interaction data stored in the server.

The following applications somehow allow for this mapping: G++, Lopia, Android's contact manager, Tree, Flock, RockMelt, etc.

Sub-block 3: Calculate the Global Weight of the Relationship

In this component, the present invention determines the global weight by combining the weights obtained on each SN (OSN and phone-based SN).

Up till now, the present invention has addressed the problem of defining what a social relationship is from different perspectives (on each social network) but the present invention should has a unified view of users' social interactions to better understand them and consequently better perform marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, efficient recommendations, customer acquisition campaigns, personalised offers, etc. the present invention weights the intensity + stability of the relationships coming from mobile communications and social network communications in accordance with the correlation they have with the answers of the questionnaire like so: ws¾fct_s!Btai = weight_{OS!l l} * γ_ν # T>veigM_BSNi * y_j + w^re:¾hi_OSj,_fis_₁•y_n_₁ + weigfit_ptumeSij * y_n

The minimum y, must be 1 so that it corresponds to the less important network and the maximum y, must be≥ 1. This means that we assign a bigger weight to the most important sources for a given user. These coefficients, which can be equally taken into account, depend on the users' preferences (a user can decide whether a given SN has more relevance for him) and also according to the weight determined in our analysis.

This approach does not only consider the global weight of the relationship according to all the weights on each data source but also rewards those relationships that occur in multiple channels.

Sub-block 4: Characterisation and Categorisation of the Relationship

The system of the present invention measures the intensity of the relationship between u, and q according to the amount of communications, analyses the stability of that relationship over time considering the pattern of the social interactions and characterises and categorises the type of communications depending on the sources where the communications occur and the time interval associated to them.

Although the system characterises and categorises the relationships of a given user in relation to his communications, the user can as well define the kind of relationship he expects to have with each of his contacts (desired level of interactions with his contacts). In accordance with this process, the system takes into account the profile of the user and his preferences.

Bear in mind that for carrying out these operations, the present invention has predefined a set of generic emotional categories which range from occasional to very close emotional closeness (Figure 7) and another set of types of relationships (couple, family, friend, colleague and acquaintance). Then, the system automatically calculates the corresponding emotional category and the associated type of relationship according to categories defined by our psychologists. To support the present invention, a questionnaire with several questions has been distributed to a significant number of volunteers in order to measure the emotional closeness they felt with their contacts and characterise their relationships according to the social interactions they had on Facebook and on the mobile phone.

For example, if a user u, phones his contact once a week, we label that relationship as "Close". However, if user u, phones his contact q four times per week and posts five times on his Facebook wall, this relationship would be labeled as "Very close" according to the results of the questionnaire.

To determine the categories on each data source, the present invention applies a logistic regression model (it can be any machine learning / data mining technique to classify) to each relationship. The model assigns likelihood to each class /category and considers as an outcome the class associated to the highest likelihood (most probable class). Given that it has multiple data sources and each one has associated a class and its respective likelihood, the present invention employs a voting system to determine the global classes for relationship type and the emotional closeness level. If a user does not belong to some of the networks, he is not penalised as is considered an accumulative approach. The present invention also considers the weight of each data source for the voting system so that to define final category, it doesn't only take into account the likelihood associated to each vote but also the corresponding weight of each data source.

Sub-block 5: Identify the Convergent Social Circles

The present invention has already unified all the communications into a single relationship for each pair <user, contact> with an associated weight (relationship strength). It also has the category and the characterisation of those relationships so that it can now apply any of the existing community detection algorithms of the state of the art such as the one proposed in WO2012004425. This way, now is able to detect the convergent social circles and their corresponding "labels". In other words, it can now characterise those social circles (family, couple, friends, etc.) so that it can better manage and organise all the contacts and propose better recommendations for the communications.

Contact Data

Repository with all the contact data: commercial information, preferences, photo, etc.

Interaction Data

Repository with all the interaction data: communications on the phone and on each social network.

Communications Layer

The communications layer handles client/server interaction. This communications layer is rooted in a REST API to send and receive data between server and client. The present invention includes SSL protocols to keep the communication between them protected. Data will be sent in JSON format.

Client Application

The information is presented to the users in an easy and user-friendly way, paying attention to the type and strength of relationship and the emotional closeness between each pair <user-contact>, as showed in Figure 8.

Every user can define the desired level of social interaction with his contacts, doing a drag & drop operation from the current list to the desired list. In this manner, the contact will be shown in the desired category but this contact will still have associated a second category according to the real communications maintained. The system informs the user about the differences between the real and desired categories and helps him out to achieve his desired levels of interactions by means of reminders or recommendations.

When a user wants to start a communication, he can display the information of a given contact or drag the contact directly into the active chat area to contact more than one person at the same time. This way, the present invention can access the main used channels of this contact and create a new interaction with him/her. The system also shows statistics and trends of the communication with each contact.

When the user logins the system, it shows a global contact view where all the contacts are grouped in rows in line with the category of the relationship (Figure 8). Each row is associated to a level of interaction.

Contact Manager The contact manager, which is in charge of the contact managing, has three components or features.

Global Contacts View

The Global Contacts View is organised in three areas:

- Contacts Area: The present invention has all contacts grouped by the calculated category of interaction.

Search control: to search a given contact.

Active chat area: to communicate with more than one person at the same time.

Additionally, there is a contextual menu with other features:

Add new services: User has to introduce the information about his account in this service to let the invention system manage their contacts.

Import new contacts from registered services.

Detailed Contact View

When the user selects a contact, a new screen is opened and the user can see the most relevant information about the contact:

Services:

o List of services where this contact is registered in our system,

o Default service to communicate through.

o Recommended service to communicate (based on the historical data and contextual information).

Data about the tag of the current interaction and the desired interaction.

Interaction:

o Latest interaction.

o Recent history.

o Interaction Statistics

When the user wants to start a communication, he has to select the communication channel by clicking the active chat area (in this case, the opened service will be the default one). As the communication is 1 to 1 , the screen will go to the specified application^'s interface.

User can edit the information about the contact to change the desired category, default service and merge this contact with another contact registered in our system.

Active Chat View When the user wants to initiate a communication with more than one person at the same time, he can directly drag the contact into the active chat area, as showed in Figure 10.

Once the user has selected all desired contacts, one user can then tap the envelope icon to begin the construction of a joint message. A new screen is opened, and the user can write the message. It can be seen then all the selected contacts with the associated services and the default and recommended service.

If a service has more than one way to interact, the application will prompt the user to select the method of communication as can be seen in Figure 1 1 , e.g. Mobile device.

Application Data

The application data of the contact manager are the following one:

Relationships among users: strength, type and emotional closeness as previously described.

Unified social circles: Unified view of the social circles of the users. - Preferences of the users: most important SNs for the user, preferred channels of communication, desired levels for his contacts, alarms, etc.

User profile: collection of personal data (both inferred and commercial data) associated to a specific user.

Inputs

The inputs to the present invention are the following:

Online social interactions from all the online social networks we want to consider.

Phone-based interactions to be taken into account: voice calls, SMS, MMS, etc.

Commercial information about the users: interests, segments, likes, etc.

Preferences of the users: most important SNs for the user, preferred channels of communication, desired levels for his contacts, alarms, etc.

The first three inputs reach the server through their respective APIs whereas the preferences come from the client application as it is the user who introduces that input.

Advantages of the Invention

The system of the present invention is an integral solution that avoids using multiple applications for each social network. The communication is now transparent for the users.

Global view of the users: the invention approach provides a unified view of the users since it fully combines the existing social networks by considering all the social interactions that user have under each context (each social network). The invention also facilitates the location of contacts and subtly recommends which communication channel is best to communicate with a person or groups of people based on previous interaction frequency and time periods.

It helps customers to care their relationships using reminders or alarms to avoid have less than a wished level of interaction or if you want to improve your level of interaction with one of your contacts.

It selects the best service to get the fastest response using the historical information (how often the contact answer from each service, timetable, etc.) and contextual data (if a user is online on a service, it can recommend this service instead of others).

It considers heterogeneous social interactions: takes into account social interactions independently of the source.

It provides full understanding of users' social circles: we take into account all the communications of each social network but in a different way, paying attention to the idiosyncrasy of each social network.

It provides insights on how the information is actually spread: a global view of the users and their relationships enables us to track how the influence is spread within the social network.

It enhances user communication experience as people are now able to send messages to specific groups of contacts who may be registered in different services.

Users don't need to use multiple applications to communicate with their contacts: All their communications are centered in one point.

It saves time when managing their social interactions.

It provides awareness of communication habits & feelings

Embodiments

The applications of the present invention are multiple. The unification of different social networks in terms of social circles can be applied to areas such as:

The invention also facilitates the location of contacts and subtly recommends which communication channel is best to communicate with a person or groups of people based on previous interaction frequency and time periods. It helps customers to care their relationships using reminders or alarms to avoid have less than a wished level of interaction or if the user wants to improve their level of interaction with one of its contacts.

Selection of the best service to get the fastest response using the historical information e.g. how often the contact answers from each service, timetable, etc.) and contextual data (if a user is online on a service, it can recommend this service instead of others).

Development of tools to suggest new contacts: as consider contacts for separate.

Prediction of hidden social connections: if it's analysed the percentage of communication each user employs in his contacts in each social networks, it can easily infer "hidden" connections with other users.

Link characterisation: depending on the nature of the social network in which a user "A" is friends with a user "B", we can determine the kind of relationship "A" has with "B".

The combination of internet-based SNs and mobile social networking provides notable novel possibilities for the companies to promote their business.

A better understanding of all the social contexts of the user leads to a better personalisation and accurate recommendations, improving the user experience.

Focalised advertisement: that is to advertise to a specific customer. This way, the present invention offers the capability to find a potential customer that may be interested on the product, finding a path for direct communication between the selling company and the final costumer. In a similar vein, some companies may introduce a product that is highly oriented to a market segment.

Focus on communities: communities in which there are the same "likes" and "dislikes" (the segments the vendors are looking for).

Furthermore, the present invention can be used for brand reputation monitoring.

ACRONYMS SN Social Network.

OSN Online Social Network.

Claims

1.- A method for managing users' social interactions networks, comprising a server performing following steps:

2.- The method of claim 1 , wherein said recommending is also performed on the basis of identifying free communication channels.

3. - The method of claim 1 , further comprising, from said information analysis, recommending to said user also at least the best service to use out of a plurality of available services provided by said social networks.

4. - The method of claim 1 , wherein said recommending is performed by providing, said server to a user terminal of said user, corresponding recommendation information.

5.- The method of claim 4, comprising centralising the access to said communications at the user's terminal by allowing the user to access to any of said social networks by just selecting the communication channel to use, based on recommended communication channels including said most appropriate one, through a common contact manager client application, in a transparent manner.

6.- The method of claim 5, further comprising, from said information analysis, determining and providing said user's terminal with information regarding relationships with said several contacts to include it into said contact manager client application.

7.- The method of claim 1 , wherein said social interactions comprise at least one of the following: phone-based communication and on-line social network communication.

8. - The method of claim 7, wherein said analysed information comprises information regarding said social interactions, commercial information about the contacts and preferences of said user.

9. - The method of claim 6, wherein said analysis further comprises analysing a social activity of said user to find the closest relationships between said user and said several contacts, the method further comprising providing said user's terminal with information regarding said found closest relationship to include it into said contact manager client application.

10. - The method of claim 9, further comprising displaying to a screen-framework of said user's terminal, by means of said contact manager client application, said several contacts according to said social activity, associated to levels of interactions of their corresponding relationships with the user.

1 1 . - A system for managing users' social interactions network, said system comprising a server and a user's terminal, wherein:

- said server is arranged for:

and

- a user's terminal with a contact manager client application, configured to receive said recommendation information from said server , said user's terminal having computing capacity and phone and/or data communications capacity.

12.- The system of claim 1 1 , wherein said user's terminal includes a screen-framework displaying said information by the contact manager client application.