Patent ID: 7849137

Claim:
A system for facilitating social interactions between users across computer networks, the system comprising: a plurality of distributed user computers, each user computer capable of accessing a webpage; and an interactive contribution widget (ICW) comprising: an ICW player for allowing the users to interact with each other, wherein the ICW player is executed on a small space on the webpage being accessed by the user computer, thereby facilitating the users to interact with each other while staying on the webpage, wherein said ICW player provides a framework for displaying a plurality of different types of interactive contribution models (ICM's) which enable social interactions, including collaborating with peer groups and/or providing biased opinions, said ICM's providing information about how to display information to a user, and an ICW server application for providing social interactions, said ICW server application receiving social data entered by a user into the ICW player, processing the received social data based upon ICM type, calculating the relevance of social data entered by the users, and sending the processed social data to the ICW player, wherein the relevance of the social data is calculated by a relevance calculator provided within the ICW server application, said relevance calculator using a formula that is different for each ICM type.