Billing system for distributing third party messages to form a community of subscribers to negotiate a group purchase from the third party

Abstract

A system, a method and a computer readable medium for distributing messages from a third-party to a group of subscribers by using subscriber information and subscriber preferences stored in a database so that the group of subscribers can form a community to negotiate a group purchase of a good and/or service from the third party. A subscriber selection system is used for querying the database using one or more subscriber criteria to form a group of one or more subscribers. The one or more subscriber criteria used to query the database is chosen by the third party, which allows the subscriber selection system to form a group of subscribers who satisfy the criteria for a type of subscriber that the third-party wants to send a message, such as an advertisement, to. A billing system, which is coupled to the database receives one or more messages from a third-party and then provides the one or more messages from the third party to the group of subscribers that was formed by the corresponding query of the database. The present invention allows the messages from the third-party to be distributed to the group of subscribers without revealing to the third party any of the potentially valuable or sensitive subscriber information stored in the database. In other words, all that a third-party knows is that its message is being sent to a group of subscriber who meet the criteria which the third-party selected. The message includes a contact address which is sent along to the subscribers in the group to form a community for pup purchasing of a good and/or service from a third party. The group of subscribers formed are sent the contact address with the messages received from the third party. The group purchase allows individuals and businesses to reduce costs by buying items in quantities.