Patent ID: 7895208

Claim:
A method for creating virtual social networks based on web-extracted data, the method comprising: searching through content published in a wide area distributed communication network for identifiers identifying respective publishers of said content, wherein said identifiers are utilized to contact the publisher of said content, if the content is selected for inclusion in a content index in a virtual social network, and wherein the searching process is triggered independent of a keyword search initiated by an individual that is identifiable by a particular search engine used to perform the keyword search; determining a first identifier associated with a first content item and a second identifier associated with a second content item, wherein each one of the first and second content items comprises one or more of an image, a video, text, and metadata, or a combination thereof; extracting data corresponding to a first feature from the first content item; extracting data corresponding to a second feature from the second content item; recognizing a common attribute that is common to the first and second features; and associating the first identifier and the second identifier such that the publishers of the first content and the second content are indexed into a common group based on the common attribute recognized for the first and the second features.