Patent ID: 8234300

Claim:
A method comprising: defining a social network as a set of users U={u, u′, . . . }; defining a set of relationships between users O ⊂ U×U, wherein (u, u′)εO responsive to user uεU and user u′εU mutually agreeing to enter a relationship; defining a set of attributes of the social network A={a 1 , a 2 , . . . }, wherein A u ⊂ A denotes a set of the attributes of the user u; defining a set of contacts of the user u, wherein U u :={u′|(u,u′)εO}; defining a user profile of the user u I u =A u ∪U u ; defining a metric M={m 1 , m 2 , . . . } where a metric m i is a tuple (name, range, type), wherein M u′ includes metrics associated with the user u′; receiving a rating of a metric of user u′ from the user u, wherein a pair (m u′,i ,v i ) denotes the rating of a metric of user u′, V defines a universe of types, and R uu′ ={(m u′,1 ,v r ), . . . , (m u′,k ,v k )} denotes a set of ratings of the user u′ defined by the user u; defining a condition cεC, wherein C is a set of conditions operative to determine authorization of access to I u , wherein the condition c includes a number of contacts U u′ of the user u′; defining a set of elements Z={z 1 , z 2 , . . . }, wherein z n includes an access category associated with I u ; receiving a request for access to I u from user u′; determining authorization for user u′ to access a subset of I u by an access control function U×U×Pow(R)×C→Pow(I u ×Z); outputting a subset of I u to user u′ as determined by the access control function to a user terminal for display to the user, wherein the user u agrees to enter a relationship with the user u′ responsive to the user u′ satisfying the condition c and the condition c includes a threshold number of k contacts the user u′ has introduced to the user u; and withdrawing the agreement to enter a relationship with the user u′ responsive to determining that the condition c has not been satisfied by the user u′.