Patent ID: 8630627

Claim:
A method for processing messages in a social network, the method performed by a computer processor and comprising: algorithmically deriving, by the computer processor, for each node in the social network, a first metric representing an expertise of a human user of the node regarding one or more corresponding topics; algorithmically deriving, by the computer processor, for each node in the social network, a second metric representing: an affinity of one or more other nodes in the social network to refer messages to the node and a likelihood of the human user of the node to respond to a message; receiving a new message from a first node in the social network, the new message including a query; providing the first node with content responsive to the query, when the content is found in a data repository; determining a relevant topic to which the query relates; algorithmically identifying, by the computer processor, one or more candidate nodes in the social network to which to refer the query, based at least in part on the first metric and the second metric derived for each of the candidate nodes; and initiating generation of a response to the query, at least when the content is not found in the data repository, wherein the initiating comprises forwarding the message to at least one of the candidate nodes.