Patent Document ID: 9218630
Application ID: 13427584
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of analyzing a community of social networking service users to identify one or more influential users within the community, the social networking service providing a platform enabling a user within the community to communicate with at least one of a plurality of other users within the community, the method comprising: by a computing device: acquiring a dataset representing the community of users; determining a contribution to a first user within the community by at least one second user of the plurality of other users within the community, the contribution by the at least one second user being defined at least in part by the following: at least a first affirmative step having been taken by the at least one second user with respect to repeating a communication by the first user received by the at least one second user, wherein the communication by the first user is also received by at least another user of the plurality of other users; calculating an influence score for the first user based at least in part on the following: a total number of users within the community and a number of users of the plurality of other users that have taken at least a second affirmative step with respect to repeating the communication by the first user, the at least first affirmative step being different than the at least second affirmative step; and revising the dataset based at least in part on the calculated influence score.