Systems and methods to provide telephonic connections via concurrent calls
View Patent ↗Methods and apparatuses to present communication references to connect people for real time communications via concurrent calls. One embodiment includes: responsive to a search request, identifying information of an entity according to the search request; associating a telephonic reference with the information of the entity; providing the telephonic reference for presentation with the information of the entity to a user; and responsive to a request made via the telephonic reference for a telephonic connection between the user and the entity, initiating a plurality of concurrent calls to a plurality of telephonic references of the entity or a plurality of concurrent calls to a plurality of telephonic references of the user.
1. A method, comprising:
presenting, over a network, to a user, information of a callee, wherein the information of the callee is associated with a telephonic reference; and
wherein the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee comprises an encrypted version of a plurality of different telephonic references of the callee:
receiving, by a computing device, via the telephonic reference, a request from the user for a telephonic connection to the callee;
initiating, by the computing device, a respective one of a first plurality of concurrent calls via a peer-to-peer network to each of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, wherein each of the plurality of different telephonic references are called for a predetermined period of time;
in response to the first plurality of concurrent calls being answered within the predetermined period of time, joining, using the computing device, the first plurality of concurrent calls into a conference; and
charging the callee an advertisement fee for each connection of the user to the callee via the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request made via the telephonic reference is received in a call to a connection server at the telephonic reference associated with the information; and the method further comprises:
identifying the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee based on the telephonic reference associated with the information in response to the received call.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee comprises one of a telephone number of the connection server without an extension, a telephone number of the connection server with an extension, a session initiation protocol uniform resource identifier, a user identifier of an instant messaging network, and a voice over Internet protocol user identifier.
4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
responsive to a call among the first plurality of the concurrent calls being answered at a first one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, connecting the call received at the connection server and the call answered at the first one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee.
5. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
responsive to a request from the callee, initiating at least one concurrent call to a subset of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, the subset not including the first one of the plurality of different telephonic references;
responsive to a call among the at least one concurrent call to the subset being answered at a second one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, joining the call received at the connection server, the call answered at the first one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, and the call answered at the second one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee into a conference.
6. The method of claim 4 , further comprising:
responsive to a request from the callee, initiating a call to a telephonic reference specified in the request from the callee;
joining the call received at the connection server, the call answered at the first one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, and the call to the different telephonic references specified in the request from the callee.
7. The method of claim 5 , wherein the request from the callee comprises a dual-tone multi frequency signal received from the callee in the call answered at the first one of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee.
8. The method of claim 5 , wherein the request from the callee is received in one of a web message, an instant message, a hypertext transfer protocol request, an email message, a short message service message, and a multimedia messaging service message.
9. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request made via the telephonic reference associated with the information is received in a message requesting a callback to the user; and the message includes the telephonic reference associated with the information.
10. The method of claim 9 , wherein a second plurality of concurrent calls to a plurality of telephonic references of the user are initiated within a time window specified by the user in the request.
11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
assigning a reference to represent the plurality of telephonic references of the user;
sending to the callee a message including the reference assigned to represent the plurality of telephonic references of the user;
wherein the second plurality of concurrent calls to the plurality of telephonic references of the user are initiated in response to a request including the reference assigned to represent the plurality of telephonic references of the user.
12. The method of claim 1 , wherein a second plurality of concurrent calls to a plurality of telephonic references of the user are initiated responsive to the callee answering one of the first plurality of concurrent calls to the plurality of different telephonic references of the-callee.
13. The method of claim 1 , wherein one of the first plurality of concurrent calls to the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee is a call for a peer to peer connection between a device of the callee and a device of the user.
14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first plurality of concurrent calls to the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee are initiated from a device of the user.
15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
charging a user a fee on behalf of the callee for a transaction carried out over a telephonic connection between the callee and the user established via the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein each of the plurality of different telephonic references is associated with a different respective device of the callee.
17. The method of claim 1 , wherein information of the callee is dynamically associated with the telephonic reference when the information of the callee is presented to the user.
18. A tangible non-transitory computer readable media storing instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method, the method comprising:
presenting, over a network, to a user, information of a callee, wherein the information of the callee is associated with a telephonic reference; and
wherein the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee comprises an encrypted version of a plurality of different telephonic references of the callee:
receiving, via the telephonic reference, a request from the user for a telephonic connection to the callee;
initiating, by the computing device, a respective one of a first plurality of concurrent calls via a peer-to-peer network to each of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, wherein each of the plurality of different telephonic references are called for a predetermined period of time;
in response to the first plurality of concurrent calls being answered within the predetermined period of time, joining, using the computing device, the first plurality of concurrent calls into a conference; and
charging the callee an advertisement fee for each connection of the user to the callee via the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee.
19. A system, comprising:
a memory; and
a processor coupled to at least the memory to:
present, over a network, to a user, information of a callee, wherein the information of the callee is associated with a telephonic reference; and
wherein the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee comprises an encrypted version of a plurality of different telephonic references of the callee:
receive, via the telephonic reference, a request from the user for a telephonic connection to the callee;
initiate a respective one of a first plurality of concurrent calls via a peer-to-peer network to each of the plurality of different telephonic references of the callee, wherein each of the plurality of different telephonic references are called for a predetermined period of time;
in response to the first plurality of concurrent calls being answered within the predetermined period of time, join the first plurality of concurrent calls into a conference; and
charging the callee an advertisement fee for each connection of the user to the callee via the telephonic reference associated with the information of the callee.