Abstract: A dynamic incentive system is described herein that uses location data, customer demographics, and other information to make real-time targeted offers to consumers to encourage particular consumer behavior. In some embodiments, the system provides incentives to attempt to modify consumer behavior. For example, a particular type of merchant may want to reach the consumers of the merchant's competitors to try to win the consumers as customers. Thus, the system may present an offer from the merchant when consumers are detected at the location of a competitor to offer the consumers an incentive to visit the merchant's store. In this way, the dynamic incentive system provides incentives to help merchants sell products and services by reaching more consumers and reaching them in new ways that are highly relevant to the consumers' current activities and location.

Abstract: A dynamic incentive system is described herein that uses location data, customer demographics, and other information to make real-time targeted offers to consumers to encourage particular consumer behavior. The system provides incentives for consumers to visit a particular merchant's store. The system may offer to unlock a digital content item if the consumer goes to the merchant's store. Merchants can define various offers and conditions for which the consumer can earn the incentive. Thus, the dynamic incentive system provides incentives to help merchants sell products and services by reaching more consumers and reaching them in new ways that are highly relevant to the consumers' current activities and location.

Abstract: A dynamic incentive system is described herein that uses location data, customer demographics, and other information to make real-time targeted offers to consumers to encourage particular consumer behavior. In some embodiments, the dynamic incentive system attempts to reach consumers that are already at a location to perform some behavior. For example, a store in a mall may want to reach out to visitors to the mall to let them know about a particular sale or product for which the store has excess inventory. Upon detecting that a matching consumer is at the location, the system may present an offer to the consumer informing the consumer of the merchant's offer. Thus, the dynamic incentive system provides incentives to help merchants sell products and services by reaching more consumers and reaching them in new ways that are highly relevant to the consumers' current activities and location.

Abstract: A crowdsourcing competition system is described herein that provides a reusable mechanism by which an organization can host a cloud-based crowdsourcing competition. The system facilitates identification of individuals, forums, submission of user-generated content (challenge submissions), automated scoring of user-generated content against test sets, automated outbound communication to participants, and web services for leaderboard functionality. The system provides workflows for users to submit submissions and for the system to receive and organize submissions. Thus, the crowdsourcing competition system provides a generic platform and automated workflow for holding crowd-sourced competitions and automating workflow of user generated content submissions.

Abstract: A submission auditing system is described herein that audits to measure participation and to prevent fraud in online crowd-sourced competitions. Auditability increases the acceptance of crowd efforts. Individual contributors and competition organizers also want to have the individual contributors receive credit from the project sponsor(s), their employer, and/or government or other entities for their time investment. An employer may encourage employees to volunteer time with various charitable organizations, and may use the system to monitor participation and award prizes based on participation. The submission auditing system addresses the problem of auditing engagement in crowd-sourced scenarios, by providing a workflow for measuring engagement with a crowdsourcing project, detecting fraud as part of that measurement, and then delivering a receipt for the individual and third parties that provides tracking for participation.

Abstract: A testimonial promotion system is described herein that automatically identifies content that has a positive sentiment for a topic that an organization cares about and includes identified content in a promotional location for the organization. The system provides a mechanism by which to view, filter, moderate, classify, and re-publish this content from multiple social media sites into a feed that can be consumed on first and third party websites. The system automatically pre-filters content based on base criteria, and then optionally queues the content for review by human moderators. After moderation, the system aggregates content from all sites into one or more feeds and publishes the feeds for consumption by one or more sites. The system spreads positive messages about the organization to a wider audience and allows consumers considering the organization's products or services to have awareness of past positive experiences with the organization that the consumers might not otherwise discover.

Abstract: A data visualization system is described herein that provides a flexible, extensible framework for visualizing analytics data. The system allows new data and data sources to be easily added to a dashboard framework without custom programming. This allows organization members without in-depth technical skills to identify organization data that is relevant to them and to quickly produce visualizations that the system can display as organization data changes. Users can leverage visualizations written by third parties and place the visualizations within analytics pages to use the visualizations to view the user's data. The system maps selected visualizations to existing or automatically generated stored procedures or other data interfaces. The system allows third parties to brand the dashboard and individual visualizations. Thus, the data visualization system empowers non-technical organization users to create visualizations of data applicable to their job function or that of other organization members.

Abstract: A sentiment visualization system provides a method for identifying content sentiment visually, and does so in a way that is also relevant to individuals who are colorblind. The system provides multiple visual cues that identify sentiment. In some embodiments, the visualization shows a bar that displays a color gradient. The color gradient is anchored by a positive color on one end and a negative color on the other end. The bar contains a color-neutral notch that represents where the sentiment value lies. The system may also allow a viewing user to reclassify an automatically determined sentiment of an item, such as by dragging a notch or other control on the visual display to a new location. Thus, the sentiment visualization system allows users to quickly sift through a large amount of content and identify high priority items for which a fast response is warranted.

Abstract: A content evaluation system is described herein that empowers end users and organizations to share their interpretation of an automatically generated sentiment score. The system provides a control that a user can move to indicate agreement or disagreement with an automatic score. The system adds metadata to a revised score based on the user's feedback that tracks information about the user to consider different demographic contexts. The system performs rescoring with the user-provided scores with contextual consideration, and then exposes the rescored values on context specific endpoints. The system provides a crowd-sourcing approach that scales extremely well, adds more accuracy because individuals within known demographic categories/contexts do the scoring, and generates value-added data products that can be sold/re-sold.

Abstract: A content distribution system allows authors to freely syndicate their content to content distributors in a way that ensures that the author receives appropriate credit for the impact of the content upon readers. The system provides an embeddable control that publishers can embed in a web site or other distribution channel. Authors provide the content displayed within the embeddable control and can include advertisements as well as any content restrictions. For advertisers, the system allows them to advertise with the content instead of the publisher, and allows them to do so in all of the venues that host the content. This places control of monetization of content back in the hands of the author, and incentivizes the author to maximize the distribution of his content to reach the widest possible audience rather than to hoard content at his own site.

Abstract: A content embedding system allows publishers to expose and deliver embeddable content in a way that a referral path of the content can be traced to determine what steps led the content to the site(s) on which the content is hosted. Content typically makes its way across the Internet in multiple steps, being passed from one user to another and one site to another. In addition to providing insight into how content is being shared across the web, the system also puts in place the tools to provide referral revenue for sites that drive significant consumption of content. Thus, the system allows a content publisher to track how his content is being consumed on various sites on a network, and to perform actions based on the tracked consumption, such as rewarding prolific distributors.

Abstract: A reputation monitoring system provides a software process that runs continuously to identify content that is fast moving and deserving of attention by an organizational representative. The system includes a software agent designed to proactively alert subscribers to potentially concerning movements of a content item within search result rankings. The agent tracks a threshold number of search results over time, and utilizes additional contextual services to determine whether to deliver an alert to subscribers. It is not uncommon for negative items to be written about an individual or organization on the web. There is significant value in being able to identify when negative items are written and if they are gaining notoriety. The reputation monitoring system provides a solution by monitoring search results.