Patent ID: 7082407

Claim:
A computer implemented method of assisting users in selecting items to purchase from an electronic catalog of items, the method comprising: maintaining purchase history data for each of a plurality of users of the electronic catalog; maintaining community data indicative of user memberships within specific explicit-membership communities that users explicitly join, wherein each of the explicit-membership communities represents a respective subset of a general user population; monitoring online browsing of the electronic catalog by a first user who is a member of an explicit-membership community to detect that an item accessed by the first user has been purchased by a second user who is also a member of the explicit-membership community, as reflected by the purchase history data and the community data; and in response to detecting that the item has been purchased by the second user, supplementing a catalog page requested by the first user to include a notification that the item has been purchased by the second user, said catalog page being a page on which the item is displayed.