Patent ID: 7991650

Claim:
A system for providing recommendations to content sites, the system comprising: a network service interface operative to: receive a first request from a content site to store event data descriptive of user-generated events, the event data comprising identifiers of particular items and particular users to which the events correspond, the first request being received over a computer network; receive a second request from the content site for item recommendations, the second request being received over the computer network; an event data repository operative to store the event data received from the content site, the event data repository comprising physical computer storage; a recommendations service operative to, in response to the second request, cause a plurality of external recommendation algorithms to provide recommendations responsive to the second request, the plurality of external recommendation algorithms being developed by recommender providers; and a billing module comprising computer hardware, the billing module operative to cause an operator of the content site to be charged fees for obtaining recommendations from the plurality of external recommenders, and operative to cause at least a portion of the fees to be provided to the recommender providers such that monetary amounts paid to a recommender provider are dependent upon a level of performance of one or more recommendation algorithms provided by the recommender provider.