Patent ID: 7797345

Claim:
A method to be executed by a computer system operating in a network environment in which Internet Protocol (IP) packets are exchanged, comprises: receiving a hierarchal post from a first user; receiving a filtering criteria associated with the hierarchal post from the first user; determining a first plurality of social network relationship factors for the first user with respect to a first plurality of users, wherein a first profile is provided for the first user and includes a first social distance between the first user and a second user, and wherein the first social distance is reduced between the first and second users as a result of a weighting factor that is determined by a frequency of communications between the first and second users, a responsiveness by the first user in answering communications from the second user, and by a manual adjustment made directly to the weighting factor by the first user; determining a second plurality of users in response to the first plurality of social network relationship factors, from the first plurality of users who fulfill the filtering criteria, wherein a third plurality of users from the first plurality of users do not fulfill the filtering criteria; making the hierarchal post available to users from the second plurality of users but not the third plurality of users; and providing the hierarchal post to the second user from the second plurality of users, wherein each of the posts are identified as having been submitted by an individual user, and wherein the hierarchal post is selected from a group consisting of classified listings, job listings, auction listings, listings of goods, listings of services, and listings of real estate.