Patent ID: 8117272

Claim:
A process for recommending prospects to social network users, the process comprising: obtaining personal attribute information from a first plurality of the users; obtaining desired-prospect attribute information from a second plurality of the users; recommending prospects to a third plurality of the users, wherein the recommended prospects have acceptable proximities to the third plurality of users based upon ratings, the desired-prospect attribute information and the personal attribute information, wherein the ratings reflect a quality of match; wherein at least some of the users are also prospects, the process further comprising identifying users that have rated each other high and low, and using these identifications in conjunction with an estimate of how similar one user is to the other to derive ratings as estimates of how the users will rate other users that they have not yet rated: wherein recommending comprises scoring user-prospect matches to indicate quality of match between respective prospects and users, wherein the scores are derived from weighting plural matched attribute information of the prospects to the users' desired-prospect attributes.