System and methods for electronic commerce using personal and business networks

Abstract

Electronic commerce over a publicly accessible computer network such as the Internet is facilitated and leveraged by a computer system that forms a community of computer user parties based on personal and business connections of the parties involved. Personal connections are created between users by invitation and mutual acceptance. Business connections are created between users when a transaction takes place between those users. Users search to perform any one or more of a variety of actions such as to purchase products, browse departments and categories for purchasing products, or explore the connections between the parties involved to find items to buy. Different groupings of the parties involved may be the users themselves and other buyers/sellers in the business network, the users themselves and their friends in the personal networks, or some combination of buyers/sellers and friends from each of the types of networks. A computer or server at a site in the network implements an architecture whereby various pages viewed by a user have links to enable them to find products.