Patent ID: 8209310

Claim:
A professional networking system for facilitating meetings between users, comprising: a computer system having a processor; a user database having a plurality of user profiles corresponding to a plurality of users; each user profile comprises one or more user profile characteristics, one or more meeting parameters, and one or more sought characteristics; the one or more user profile characteristics comprise characteristics of the corresponding user; the one or more meeting parameters comprise one or more available meeting dates when the corresponding user is available to meet another user; and the one or more sought characteristics correspond to one or more user profile characteristics that the user corresponding to the user profile seeks in another user; an advertiser database including an advertiser profile for each advertiser, each advertiser profile having at least one benefit offered by the advertiser and at least one geographic location parameter representing one or more locations where the benefit can be redeemed; a user matching function executable by the processor to match two or more users when the one or more available meeting dates of a first user profile of said plurality of user profiles matches the one or more available meeting dates of a second user profile of said plurality of user profiles and at least one of the one or more sought characteristic of the first user profile matches to a corresponding at least one of the one or more user profile characteristic of the second user profile by comparing the one or more available meeting dates of the first user profile with the one or more available meeting dates of the second user profile and comparing the one or more sought characteristics of the first user profile with the corresponding one or more user profile characteristics of the second user profile, where the first user profile corresponds to a first user of the two or more users and the second user profile corresponds to a second user of the two or more users; a benefit matching function executable by the processor to generate a benefit list comprising one or more benefits by selecting one or more benefits of one or more advertiser profiles having the at least one geographic location parameter corresponding to a meeting location area of the two or more users matched by the user matching function; and, a match notification function executable by the processor to communicate over a network a match notification to notify one or more users of the two or more users matched by the user matching function, wherein the match notification includes the benefit list.