Patent ID: 8386534

Claim:
A method for generating a set of candidates who may provide a useful response to a query submitted by a querier in a first social networking site associated with a first social network, comprising: receiving the query; automatically gleaning semantic information from a first personal page in the first social networking site, the first personal page associated with a member of the first social network; calculating a first score based on the semantic information automatically gleaned from the first personal page, the semantic information being relevant to the query and associated with a plurality of fields on the first personal page, wherein calculating the first score comprises: assigning a value to each of the plurality of fields on the first personal page based on relevance to the query of information contained in each of the plurality of fields on the first personal page, wherein a value of one of the plurality of fields on the first personal page is not equal to a value of one other of the plurality of fields on the first personal page, and calculating a sum of values of the plurality of fields on the first personal page; adding the member to the set of candidates based on the first score; finding a uniform resource locator on the first personal page identifying a second personal page associated with the member in a second social networking site; automatically gleaning semantic information from the second personal page; calculating a second score based on the semantic information automatically gleaned from the second personal page, wherein calculating the second score comprises: assigning a value to each of a plurality of fields on the second personal page based on relevance to the query of information contained in each of the plurality of fields on the second personal page, wherein a value of one of the plurality of fields on the second personal page is not equal to a value of one other of the plurality of fields on the second personal page, and calculating a sum of values of the plurality of fields on the second personal page; adding the member to the set of candidates based on the second score; and automatically sending an email message containing the query to the set of candidates.