Encoding and using information about distributed group discussions

摘要

Techniques are described for analyzing user-supplied information, including to predict future aspects of additional related information that will be supplied by users. The user-supplied information may include distributed group discussions that involve numerous users and occur via user comments and other content items supplied to one or more social networking sites and/or other computer-accessible sites. The analysis of user-supplied information may, for example, include determining particular topics that are of interest for a specified category during one or more periods of time, summarizing and encoding information about multiple selected factors for comments supplied for particular topics or a category during each period of time (such as to quantify an amount of user interest), predicting future values for the selected factors for the topics and category during one or more future period of times, and taking one or more further actions based on the predicted information.