Patent ID: 8103540

Claim:
A method for suggesting items of interest to a community of online subscribers, comprising: determining, with a network computing device, a first set of items that have been adopted by more than half the subscribers within the community of online subscribers; computing an adoption rate for each online subscriber, wherein the adoption rate comprises: aggregating each online subscriber's adoption score for at least one item of the first set of items to produce an aggregated adoption score, and dividing the aggregated adoption score by a number of items from the first set of items actually adopted by the online subscriber; identifying respective subscribers within the community of online subscribers by ranking each online subscriber's adoption rate; classifying a predefined percentage of the respective subscribers as trendsetters; measuring, with a network computing device, a second adoption rate by the trendsetters for a particular item of a second set of items; and making recommendations by the recommender system for the first particular item of the second set of items based on a value of the second adoption rate.