Patent ID: 8600812

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving at a server information indicating activity levels of users of a computer-implemented social network or acquaintance relationships of the users on the computer-implemented social network; generating by the server influence scores for the users based on the received information; determining that a difference between a first influence score of a propagating user and a second influence score of a recipient user is greater than a threshold; and recursively propagating, by the server until an end condition is met, an ad through the computer-implemented social network between users having an acquaintance relationship by transmitting the ad from a propagating user to a recipient user, wherein the end condition comprises, for a particular propagating user, each candidate recipient user with an acquaintance relationship with the particular propagating user having either: i) an influence score that is greater than an influence score of the particular propagating user or ii) already received a transmission of the ad.