International Business Machines Corporation

Brendan J McCormick

Mei Yang Selvage

Eoin Lane

Peter Alan Coldicott

Embodiments of the present invention provide an approach for goal-based user matching among social networking environments. In a typical embodiment, a querying user is asked to respond to a series of questions related to goals, criteria, and criteria priorities (and, optionally, a desired 'degree' of separation among other users). The querying user will submit his/her responses, which are then parsed and prioritized accordingly. Based on the responses, social networking sites are then searched to identify a set (e.g., at least one) of candidate users that are potential collaboration partners with the querying user. This set of candidate users may be arranged in a list and sorted according to a best match to the querying user's responses. The list can then be provided to the querying user. In addition, invites can be sent to the set of candidate users to invite such users to connect/collaborate with the querying user.

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Wilmington, DE, United States of America

Brendan J McCormick