Patent ID: 6931399

Claim:
A method of providing personalized information comprising: a) providing a database comprising a plurality of contributor content records and a plurality of contributor profile records, wherein each contributor content record corresponds to a contributor profile record; and wherein the database further comprises descriptor information corresponding to the contributor content records; b) obtaining a user profile record; c) obtaining a user search query; d) comparing the user search query with at least a portion of the descriptor information; e) comparing at least a portion of the user profile record with at least two contributor profile records; f) providing personalized information comprising contributor content records based upon the results of the comparisons in (d) and (e) above, wherein the user profile record and the contributor profile records each comprise a plurality of corresponding data elements, and wherein the step of comparing at least a portion of the user profile record with at least two contributor profile records comprises the steps of: i) comparing a first data element of the user profile record with a corresponding first data element of a first contributor profile record to generate a first comparison score; ii) comparing a second data element of the user profile record with a corresponding second data element of the first contributor profile record to generate a second comparison score; iii) combining the generated comparison scores to calculate a first match rating between the user profile record and the first contributor profile record; iv) repeating steps (i)-(iii) using a second contributor profile record to calculate a match rating between the user profile record and the second contributor profile record; and v) using the calculated match ratings to provide the personalized information.