Patent ID: 8312036

Claim:
A method for providing a recommendation, comprising: receiving an indication of a selection of an option by a first member of an online community to create a recommendation to be presented to one or more other members of the online community; providing to the first member a user interface for defining the recommendation; receiving from the first member via the user interface a selection of a set of items to be included in the recommendation, wherein the set of items comprises complementary items recommended by the first member to be used together; receiving from the first member information about the recommendation including data associated with one or more reasons why one or more items included in the set of items are useful for a topic associated with the recommendation; storing the recommendation including the set of items selected by the first member and the information about the recommendation provided by the first member, wherein storing the recommendation comprises determining one or more tags to be associated with the recommendation, wherein determining one or more tags to be associated with the recommendation comprises one or more of the following: receiving one or more tags from the first member, prompting the first member for one or more tags, parsing the recommendation to determine one or more tags, and determining one or more tags associated with one or more items included in the set; and presenting the recommendation including the set of items selected by the first member and the information about the recommendation provided by the first member including the data associated with one or more reasons why one or more items included in the set of items are useful for the topic associated with the recommendation to a second member of the online community based at least in part on an indication that the recommendation is of interest to the second member.