Patent ID: 8195631

Claim:
A method comprising: storing a data source of resource profiles associated with a plurality of resources, each resource being at least one of a plurality of resource types; receiving, through a user interface, one or more first attributes of a resource desired by a user, wherein receiving attributes comprises receiving a search template from the user and the search template is auto-configured based on the resource type, attributes, or facets; searching, using a processor, the data source of resource profiles for profiles having one or more of the first attributes; providing, to the user, a hit-list of resources having the one or more first attributes; receiving one or more second attributes of the resource through a refinement user interface; searching, using a processor, the hit-list for resources having the one or more second attributes; providing, to the user, a narrowed hit-list of resources having the one or more first and second attributes; storing the hit-list as a collection of resources which is used for further actions or stored as a persistent collection, automatically creating two or more segments of the narrowed hit-list by grouping the resources according to one of a plurality of attribute dimensions generating, for the user, statistics associated with the segments; receiving a selection of two or more segments through the user interface; providing, to the user, a subset of the narrowed hit-list based on the selected two or more segments; and using the hit-list to create a community, the community only including users sharing the first attribute.