Tremendous changes have been occurring in the Internet that influence our everyday lives. For example, online social networks have become the new meeting grounds. The development of such online social networks touch countless aspects of our everyday lives, providing instant access to people of similar mindsets, and enabling us to form partnerships with more people in more ways than ever before.
One aspect of our everyday lives that may be affected by online social networking technology is the ease in which news stories and other forms of gossip may be shared over the internet. Gossip and other forms of word-of-mouth communications have been considered to be a great source of news for centuries. However, all too often while some shared news or gossip may be interesting to some people; it may not be interesting to others. One approach for determining how interesting such shared news or gossip may be is to have people vote on it. The more often someone votes positively for an item, the more likely it is popular. However, merely because something is highly popular generally, it does not indicate that it is interesting to a particular audience. For example, the fact that a thousand people voted a particular article very high may say little about whether a different thousand people would find the article interesting at all. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds