Patent ID: 8204878

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: receiving, over a network, item ratings from a plurality of users, wherein each rating relates to one of a plurality of items; assigning, using at least one computing device, each of the plurality of items to at least one of a plurality of data regions; identifying, using the at least one computing device, at least one source region for each of the plurality of data regions; determining, using the at least one computing device, for a selected one user of the plurality of users, a region potential interest score for each of the plurality of data regions, wherein the region potential interest score increases as the number of the plurality of items assigned to the respective data region rated by the selected user decreases, and wherein the region potential interest score additionally increases as the number of the plurality of items assigned to the respective data region rated by a user network decreases, wherein the user network comprises a subset of the plurality of users related to the selected user by at least one relationship criteria; determining, using the at least one computing device, for the selected user, for each one of the plurality of regions, a user similarity score for each one of the plurality of users, wherein the user similarity score is computed by comparing item ratings transmitted by the selected user and the each respective one of the plurality of users for each of the plurality of items assigned to each of the at least one source regions assigned to the respective one of the plurality of data regions; determining, using the at least one computing device, for the selected user, for each one of the plurality of regions, a regional relevance score for each of the plurality of items assigned to the respective data region, wherein the regional relevance score is computed using the user similarity score for each of the plurality of users that rated the respective item and the ratings transmitted by the respective user; determining, using the at least one computing device, for the selected user, for each of the plurality of items, an overall relevance score using the regional relevance scores and the region potential interest scores for respective items; selecting, using the at least one computing device, for the selected user, a list of recommended items, wherein the list of recommended items comprises at least one reference to at least one item having a positive overall relevance score; and transmitting, over the network, the list of recommended items to the selected user.