USER INTERFACES FOR PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATIONS
A ranked set of users may be calculated from an expertise categorization for each user and a person's trust in the users for specific categories. The ranked set of users may be used for presenting search results, recommendations, social marketing, or other uses. A person's expertise may be determined through various online activities. A person's trust in another person may be related to their proximity and activity in one or more social networks.
1 . A method performed on at least one computer processor, said method comprising:
receiving a user identifier and a context, said user identifier identifying a user;
identifying a plurality of user created information, each of said plurality of user created information being associated with at least one person having a relationship with said user in a social network;
for each of said created information, determining a trust factor between said user and said at least one person based on said user's relationships within said online social network;
determining a ranking for said user created information based at least in part on said trust factor; and
presenting said user created information according to said ranking on a user interface.
2 . The method of claim 1 , said relationship comprising at least a two degree relationship to said user.
3 . The method of claim 1 , said context being a node in a hierarchical taxonomy of topic classifications.
4 . The method of claim 1 , said user interface being a user interface component within an application user interface.
5 . The method of claim 4 , said application user interface being provided by an application server and said user interface being supplied by a social marketing server.
6 . The method of claim 5 , said application server transmitting said user identifier and said context.
7 . The method of claim 1 , said trust factor being determined at least in part by determining a number of nodes between said user and said person in a social network.
8 . The method of claim 7 , said number of nodes being determined from a plurality of social networks.
9 . The method of claim 1 further comprising:
presenting at least one indicator used to determine said trust factor in said user interface.
10 . A user interface presented on a computer device as part of an application, said application having a usage context and being executed for a user, said user interface comprising:
a person identifier for a person being within a computerized social network and related to said user;
a reputation indicator that indicates a reputation level for said person;
at least one trust descriptor that indicates a trust type between said user and said person; and
a link to a document being a document from which said reputation level was at least partially derived.
11 . The user interface of claim 10 further comprising:
an input mechanism that launches a communication mechanism to communicate with said person.
12 . The user interface of claim 11 , said communication mechanism being a communication mechanism available within said computerized social network.
13 . The user interface of claim 11 , said communication mechanism being a communication mechanism operating outside said computerized social network.
14 . The user interface of claim 10 further comprising:
a plurality of expertise indicators, each of said expertise indicators having a usage context indicator.
15 . The user interface of claim 10 further comprising:
a link to a document relating to said usage context and associated with said person.
16 . The user interface of claim 15 , said document comprising a product review for a product relating to said usage context.
17 . A user interface presented on a computer device as part of an application, said application having a usage context and being executed for a user, said usage context comprising a product, said user interface comprising:
a plurality of reviews for said product, said reviews being reviews created by people within a social network for said user;
for each of said reviews:
a person identifier for a person being within a computerized social network and related to said user;
an reputation indicator that indicates an expertise level for said person;
at least one trust descriptor that indicates a trust type between said user and said person; and
a link to a document being a document from which said expertise level was at least partially derived.
18 . The user interface of claim 17 , said plurality of reviews being sorted by a trust factor derived from said social network.
19 . The user interface of claim 18 , said plurality of reviews being further grouped by positive and negative reviews.
20 . The user interface of claim 19 further comprising at least one picture for one of said persons.