Patent ID: 7249123

Claim:
A computer implemented method for building a social network for systematically leveraging information and expertise to improve organizational responsiveness, innovation, competency, and efficiency, comprising: selecting an electronic meeting or online presence; tracking directed and undirected activities by each of a plurality of individuals to said electronic meeting or online presence; inferring individual first order and second order connections to said electronic meeting or online presence by said individuals from said directed and undirected activities; a first order connection inferred between first and second individuals each having a direct activity with respect to said electronic meeting or online presence; a second order connection inferred between said first individual and a third individual, with said third individual sharing a first order connection to a second electronic meeting or online presence with said second individual; defining said social network to include said first, second and third individuals sharing said connections to said electronic meeting or online presence; and at least momentarily fixing for recording and reporting purposes at a user interface a visual representation of said social network; said visual representation being presented by: providing to a user interface of a computer apparatus user selectable buttons for selecting at least one designated community and one metric type from a set of metric types including connection metric, people metric, and social networks metric; with said social networks metric selected, providing at said user interface user selectable buttons for selecting first degree network, second degree network, and connections analysis components; responsive to user selection of said social networks metric and said first degree network analysis component, presenting at said user interface a display of said first and second individuals sharing first order connections to said designated community; responsive to user selection of said social networks metric and said second degree network analysis component, presenting at said user interface a display of said first, second, and third individuals sharing first order and second order connections to said designated community; and responsive to user selection of said connections analysis component, presenting at said user interface a community connections listing.