Patent Document ID: 9298826
Application ID: 13344042

Base Claim:
1. A method for matching users among social networking environments, the method comprising: a processor receiving one or more goals from a querying user and storing the one or more goals in an electronic storage medium; the processor providing one or more selection criteria to the querying user, the selection criteria relating to attributes of a desired set of candidate users to collaborate with the querying user; the processor receiving a response to at least one of the one or more selection criteria and storing the response in the electronic storage medium; the processor receiving, from the querying user, a desired degree of social network separation between the querying user and the desired set of candidate users to collaborate with the querying user in achieving the one or more goals; the processor weighting one or more selection criteria relative to one another; the processor prioritizing the one or more selection criteria based on a corresponding weight derived from the weighting; the processor searching a set of social networks based on the set of goals, the prioritized selection criteria, and the desired degree of social network separation, for a set of candidate users; the processor ranking the set of candidate users based on a likelihood of each candidate user in the set of candidate users matching the set of goals and the response; and the processor sending a collaboration invitation to at least one candidate user in the set of candidate users matching the set of goals and the response; wherein the social networking environment comprises a set of nodes each corresponding to one user of a set of users, and each of the set of nodes being connected to other nodes of the set of nodes by at least one network to form the social networking environment; and wherein the desired degree of social network separation comprises a numerical indicator of a maximum number of connected nodes between a node corresponding to the querying user and a set of nodes corresponding to the set of candidate users.

---

Claim 3:
3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising the processor sending a list identifying the set of candidate users to the querying user.