Patent ID: 7734708

Claim:
A method for populating identities in a message service, the method comprising: registering a user of a first instant messaging service with a second instant messaging service different from the first instant messaging service; identifying user identities for users other than the registered user, wherein the user identities are associated with the first instant messaging service and the user identities are stored in a list associated with the registered user; determining when at least one of the user identities from the list of user identities has a matching user identity associated with the second instant messaging service comprising: identifying a unique portion of each user identity associated with the first instant messaging service has at least a required amount of common features with a unique portion of a user identity associated with the second instant messaging service; determining a degree of uniqueness of the user identity associated with the second instant messaging service; adjusting the required amount of common features between the unique portion of each user identity associated with the first instant messaging service and a unique portion of a matching user identity associated with the second instant messaging service based on the determined the degree of uniqueness of the user identity associated with the second instant messaging service; populating, by a hardware processor, a database associated with the second instant messaging service with the matching user identities; and storing the database associated with the second instant messaging service, the database accessible by the second instant messaging service.