Bill Gates and Top Forward ThinkersPatenting ‘Rewarding online influencers’1

Ehud Barone, inventor, udi@beesandpollen.com

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See inside - 7 facts of what makes Gates patent so interesting and powerful

Ehud Barone udi@beesandpollen.com

• 2005: Inventor of “Advertising and incentives over a social network” US 8560385 B2 - first patent combining social influencers + ad campaigns for word-of-mouth generation + rewards based on influence, in a practical method relevant for today’s social networks (e.g. Google, Facebook)

• 2006 – present: CTO, Bees and Pollen, active in the field of leveraging social network data for optimized delivery of user experience

• 2014 – present: IP Monetization

About me

Gates application wasn’t made on Microsoft’s behalf

“Here's what we know: An entity called Searete LLC applied for the patents. Searete is part of Intellectual Ventures LLC, the Bellevue-based invention house run by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s former chief technology officer. ”

“Searete’s latest batch of patent applications, which were made public Oct. 30 and list the Microsoft executives as inventors, describe various ways of figuring out how people are influenced by content on the Internet – and then rewarding content providers based on how much influence they have. ”Source: Bill Gates, top Microsoft executives do some of their inventing on the side (Nov 10, 2008)

FACT

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1. Craig Mundle – Microsoft chief research and strategy officer2. Gary Flake – one of Microsoft’s top internet gurus3. Alex Gounares – a key Microsoft online advertising executive4. Rick Rashid – Microsoft Research chief5. Mark A. Malamud – Intellectual Ventures senior inventor

Including: W. Daniel Hillis, Royce A. Levien, Christopher D. Payne, Clarence T. Tegreene, Charles Whitmer, Lowell L. Wood

Gates wasn’t alone. There were 11 more top inventors

FACT

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Gates application captures a very wide concept of rewarding online influencers (complementary to affiliates)

ContentRelation

Ownership

Possible matter of interest

Person

3rd Party

ContentOwner

Step 1:Access

Step 2:Influence

Step 3:Involvement

Step 4:Reward/Benefit

Gates comprises of 4 general steps:

1. A person accessing a content owned by a content owner where:• the content relates to a 3rd party

(e.g. brand). • The person and the 3rd party has

a possible matter of interest2. The accessed content influencing the

person3. The person triggering some kind of

involvement with the 3rd party (independent of clicking an affiliate link)

4. The content owner receiving a reward/benefit in response to his content’s influence

FACT

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Patent #8712837 Rewarding independent influencersPatent #8793155 Collecting influence informationPublication #20080270552 Determining influencersPublication #20080270551 Rewarding influencers

Publication #20080270620 Reporting influence on a person by network-available content

Publication #20080270474 Collecting influence information

Publication #20080270473 Determining an influence on a person by web pages

Publication #20080270416 Determining influencers

Publication #20080270234 Rewarding influencers

Gates application extends to 9 publications (8 continuations)with 2 granted publications and 7 pending publications

From now on we’ll focus on this patent

FACT

4 of 7

Gates Patent #8712837 (Rewarding independent influencers)has a broad main claim

“CLAIMS

What is claimed is:

1. An influence evaluation method, the method comprising:

receiving data indicative of a person accessing at least one of a first network-available electronic content owned by a first owner or a second network-available electronic content owned by a second owner;

receiving data indicative of an involvement with respect to a possible matter of interest between the person and a third-party, the involvement being independent of the person activating a link to a site owned by the third-party that is included in the first network-available electronic content or in the second network-available electronic content;

assessing a behavioral influence by the first network-available electronic content and/or the second network-available electronic content on the indicated involvement with respect to the possible matter of interest between the person and the third-party; and

facilitating delivery of a benefit to the first owner of the first network-available electronic content and/or the second owner of the second network-available electronic content in response to the assessed behavioral influence.”

FACT

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Some key strengths of the patent’s main claim:

• Just 4 steps• All 4 steps are essential• All 4 steps are broad making

smart use of a short distinctive description of the innovative step (e.g. excluding activating an affiliate link as an influence related data source)

Gates Patent #8712837 (Rewarding independent influencers)addresses huge content chain of supply

FACT

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Social networks’ members

(e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+)

Experts & Influencers

(e.g. LinkedIn, Quora)

Bloggers(e.g. WordPress)

Reviewers(e.g. Yelp, Google+

Local)

Brands’Websites

ContentVertical

Websites

SearchEngines

Apps

Content Distributors

Content Publishers

Content Consumers (Users) Driving Traffic, Sales and $

InfluencersGenerating

Content

Patent - rewarding influencers

User Generated ContentWhy User-Generated Content Is the new marketing currency (Nov, 2014)

Gates Patent #8712837 (Rewarding independent influencers) captures multi hyper growth market trends

FACT

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65%65% of brandsParticipate in digitalInfluencer marketing

92%

92% of consumers trust their friends and family more than ads, andthey’re much more likely To make purchase based onRecommendations than billboards

Social Networks

61%61% of influencers saybrands contact themfor their access to Certain audiences

Google +Post Ads - amplify your content and create conversations across the web

Social spend will double by 2018 (Nov, 2014)

Influencers & Experts BloggersThe surprising brilliance of the linkedin influencers program (Aug, 2013)

Over 409 million people view more than 17.6 billion pages of bloggers each month (WordPress, 2014)

Brands and influencers goes together

User generated content is king

Source: Rewarding digital influencers (Jun, 2014)

Thanks!

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