Abstract: The technology provides content about a user to a currently executing instance of an application which uses the provided content to personalize and make its processing contextually relevant for a user. When the application instance is launched, a message requesting data related to categories for a user is sent to a context relevant, content aggregation and distribution system. The service executes within a cloud computing system, and provides the application instance with content derived from sources like other applications and data stored on devices the application instance is not or cannot communicate with. The service gathers content from many different types of online resources such as e-mail, social networking sites, websites, and other data accessible over communication networks with different communication protocols.

Abstract: A content aggregation and distribution service, which can execute in a cloud computing environment, provides content based on a broadcast user's topics of interest to a subscriber user based on the context of the subscriber. An example of a broadcast user is a celebrity. Content is automatically gathered about the broadcast user's designated topics of interest from online resources, and filtered and distributed based on a context of the subscriber. Some examples of online resources are websites, social networking sites, and purchase transaction systems. An example of broadcast content is a recommendation which may have been entered directly to the service or posted by the celebrity in his or her social networking account. Both the broadcast user and the subscriber can control respectively the distribution and reception of content with subscription settings. For examples, the settings may set limitations with respect to topics, contexts, and subscriber profile data.