Patent ID: 8712675

Claim:
A community routing system comprising: a processor; a memory coupled to the processor; a transceiver to connect and exchange information with a community of global positioning system (GPS) devices; and a processing logic executing on the processor configured to: receive a route request from one or more GPS devices within the community of GPS devices, wherein each GPS device in the community is associated with a vehicle; identify a preferred route for directing the one or more vehicles in the community to the desired destination; determine one or more vehicles in the community traveling along the preferred route; evaluate alternate roads that can be taken off the preferred route to reach the desired destination; create at least two optimized routes to reach the desired destination, wherein the at least two optimized routes provides routing instructions to minimize driving time for the community of GPS devices; transmit a first optimized route to reach the desired destination to a first subset of GPS devices within the community of GPS devices; transmit a second optimized route to reach the desired destination to a second subset of GPS devices within the community of GPS devices; transmit, to a particular GPS device, a selection of one or more alternate routes in use by one or more GPS devices of a third subset of GPS devices within the community of GPS devices, wherein the third subset of GPS devices and the particular GPS device are part of a same social network, wherein a social network is a group of users associated with a corresponding group of GPS devices that are collectively registered with the community routing system; transmit identification information of a user of each alternate route to the particular GPS device, wherein the identification information contains a full name of the user of each alternate route; provide a selection to the particular GPS device of a currently selected route and the one or more alternate routes in use by the third subset of GPS devices; and receive a selection of an alternate optimized route from the one or more alternate routes in use by the third subset of GPS devices.