Patent ID: 8923830

Claim:
A method for routing a query within a social network, the method performed by a computer processor and comprising: algorithmically deriving, by the processor, for each node of a plurality of nodes in the social network, a metric representing expertise of the node to respond to queries; receiving the query; directing the query to one or more of the plurality of nodes in the social network; receiving a tagged version of the query from at least one of the one or more of the plurality of nodes, the tagged version comprising meta-content that was added by one or more of the plurality of nodes; algorithmically identifying, by the processor, one or more candidate nodes to whom to further direct the query, based at least in part on the metric representing expertise derived for each of the one or more candidate nodes and based at least in part on the meta-content in the tagged version of the query; directing the query to the candidate nodes.