Patent ID: 8296356

Claim:
A method of providing a rating comprising: using a processor to perform acts comprising: receiving, from a first person, an indication of a rating target, wherein said rating target is an object, a thing, a service, a product, or a second person other than said first person; identifying a first set of one or more raters that stand in a relationship to said first person and that have rated said rating target; communicating, to said first person, information based on (a) one or more ratings of said rating target that have been provided by said first set of one or more raters, and (b) a differentiation of said first set of one or more raters from a second set of raters that do not stand in said relationship to said first person, wherein said information comprises a number based on said one or more ratings; and performing a computation to generate said number, where said computation is based on each of said one or more ratings, and where said computation assigns, to each given rating, r i , a weight, w i , based on a degree of connection, d i , between said first person and a rater that provided the given rating, wherein the weight, w i , is a non-zero number for ratings provided by raters whose degree of connection to said person is n or less, and zero for ratings provided by raters whose degree of connection to said first person is greater than n, where n is a positive number, and wherein the weight is the same non-zero number for ratings provided by raters whose degree of connection is n or less, so that said number is equal to Σ i ((r i ·w i )/s), where s equals either 1 or the total number of ratings, where w i =0 for all d i >n and w i ≠0 for all d i <n.