HK1153836B - Access to trusted user-generated content using social networks - Google Patents

Description

Accessing trusted user-generated content using social networks

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a method, computer program and system for providing User Generated Content (UGC), such as ratings and comments, trusted by internet users.

Background

Internet users are interested in user-generated content, such as ratings and reviews of products and services, but performing extensive searches for this content requires significant effort and time. In addition, it is difficult to determine which content is trustworthy. Today, user-generated content is separated among many websites. For example, ratings and reviews for a hotel may be available from Yahoo!^TMTravel, Frommer' s^TM，Expedia^TMAnd (4) obtaining. In the restaurant area, ratings and reviews may be available from Yahoo!^TMLocal, Yelp^TMAnd the like. In the field of online shopping, product ratings and reviews may be available from Yahoo!^TMShopping, Epinions^TM，CNET^TMAnd the like.

There is no simple way to search for these independent (solified) sites. For example, users interested in information about hotels in san francisco have essentially two choices: in a location such as Yahoo!^TMSuch as a web search engine searching for "san Francisco Hotel reviews" or a separate web site containing travel information, such as Yahoo!^TMTravel and TripAdvisor^TM. The first option requires filtering out irrelevant entries in the search results. The second option is time consuming because it requires searching multiple web sites one at a time. In addition, the second option requires the user to know all major websites for a particular area of interest (e.g., a trip or hotel in the example above).

In addition, there is a huge amount of user-generated content available, which complicates the problem of finding the correct information since accurate filtering is required to get relevant information. For example, if a user is looking for a dining creative in san francisco, where should the user start? At each of the primary content sites, there are hundreds of reviews of restaurants and tens of cuisine styles in san francisco. If a user is looking for a general creative, the search criteria broadens, making it difficult for the search mechanism to find the desired information according to the user's intent.

Another problem faced by users looking for ratings and reviews is that ratings and reviews are anonymous in nature. For each review, a username is typically displayed, but typically, the content reader is not aware of the identity associated with the username, and thus there is no basis for determining the trustworthiness of the author and its reviews. User-generated content can be very biased. For example, typically, only residents with negative experiences post on an apartment rating website. Conversely, some hotel rating websites have been known to allow hotel workers to anonymously post positive reviews of their own hotels.

Another aspect of getting good UGC is that the published information is only consistent with the expertise level of the author. To remain up to date in a certain area, users must expend significant effort to synchronize with a product or service category. For example, technical installations and fashion are two areas that require significant time, search effort and taste to keep up with the trend. Most people do not keep up with the time required for these changes. However, people often have friends who have the required expertise and whose opinions are extremely valued. Today, there is no easy way to access content generated by a user's friends. The only way is to email the link identifying the location of the content.

Disclosure of Invention

The foregoing problems can be solved by: using a device such as Yahoo!^TM、Mash^TM、Yahoo！^TM360，Facebook^TMOr Myspace^TMSuch as social networks, to organize user-generated content that is currently dispersed across multiple websites.

Embodiments of the present invention provide methods, computer programs and systems for accessing trusted User Generated Content (UGC). Information from the social network is used to identify an extended social network that includes users of multiple social networks. UGC is provided to Internet users based on the extended social network of the users and the social peers of the users.

It should be appreciated that the present invention can be implemented in numerous ways, such as a process, an apparatus, a system, a device or a method on a computer readable medium. Several inventive embodiments of the present invention are described below.

In an embodiment, a method of accessing trusted User Generated Content (UGC) is provided. The method includes receiving user registration information having one or more identities for each user. Each identity corresponds to a social network assisted by one of a plurality of social networking sites (facilitate). Then, social relationships corresponding to the identities for each user are collected in a plurality of social networking sites, and a user-extended social network is created for each user by combining the collected social relationships. The method also includes collecting UGC from the plurality of social networking sites and correlating the collected UGC with the extended social network. The method filters the correlated UGC according to a user configuration of the requesting user and provides content available for presentation on the display.

In another embodiment, a search function is provided to obtain information on demand. In another embodiment, the user subscribes to a feed of information (feeds of information) according to configured information about the user's extended social network.

Other aspects of the invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, illustrating by way of example the principles of the invention.

Drawings

The invention will be best understood from the following description and the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 depicts an Internet environment in which a user accesses social networking information.

FIG. 2 illustrates user social relationships and user-generated content.

FIG. 3 depicts how identities from different social networks are related and rules to access or share information, according to one embodiment.

FIG. 4A illustrates a search user interface to access UGC in one embodiment.

FIG. 4B illustrates sample UGC displayed to a user in one embodiment.

FIG. 5 depicts the architectural components in one embodiment of the extended social network server.

FIG. 6 depicts a process of combining social information from different networks and collecting UGC.

FIG. 7 illustrates a process flow to access trusted UGC in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

In the Internet arena, social networks are online social structures that are used to share interests and activities, or communities of people interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitate the use of software. Internet social networks are often implemented by internet social network service providers that build and validate social networks. Most services are primarily web-based and provide a variety of ways for user interaction, e.g., chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, shared files, blogs, discussion groups, etc.

The main types of social networking services include the following: catalogs of certain categories, e.g., previous classmates; means of contact with friends, typically including self-describing pages; to be provided withAnd a recommendation system linked to the trusted content. Some examples of social networking sites are Yahoo! Group of^TM、MySpace^TM、Bobo^TM、Facebook^TM、Hi5^TMGoogle's Orkut^TMAnd Frondster^TM。

A method of accessing trusted User Generated Content (UGC) is provided. User registration information is obtained that includes one or more identities. These identities correspond to different internet social networks facilitated by social network service providers, where each service is associated with an internet social network site. Social relationships in each social network are collected using the provided user identities, and a user-extended social network for each user is created by joining the collected social relationships. Combining social relationships includes identifying multiple identities of a single user in different social networks, and then merging the user's social networks into one extended social network that includes all of the relationships dispersed among the different social networks.

UGC is then collected from the plurality of social networking sites and associated with the extended social network, including identifying the owner of the content from the extended social network of the registered user. The correlated UGC is filtered according to the user configuration of the requesting user, and the results are then presented to the requesting user. The results may be displayed to the user in a number of ways, for example, on a display using a web browser, email, instant message, etc. For example, the display may be part of a computer system or a mobile phone.

A search function is provided to enable a user to obtain information as desired. Alternatively, the user may subscribe to a feed of information according to a configuration regarding the user's extended social network.

In another embodiment, a system for accessing trusted UGC includes a plurality of social sites and a registration server to receive user registration information. The registration information includes one or more identities for each user in a plurality of social networking sites. The system also includes a crawler (crawler) to collect UGC and social relationships corresponding to each user's identity from a plurality of social networking sites, and a user metadata database including the user's extended social networks. By joining the collected social relationships, a user extended social network is created and the collected UGC is related to the extended social network.

The system also includes a user content database containing UGCs obtained by the crawler, a search engine to filter the correlated UGCs, and a display to provide content to a requesting user.

It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art, that the present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In other instances, well known process operations have not been described in detail in order not to unnecessarily obscure the present invention.

FIG. 1 depicts an Internet environment in which users access social networking information. There may be multiple social networking sites on the internet 110. Each social site is hosted by one or more social network servers 112, 114, and 116. Users 122, 124, 126, 128, and 130 belonging to the social network create relationships that link them to other users' social networks. Fig. 1 illustrates some sample relationships by the following dashed arrows: connecting user 122 to 124, 128, and 130; users 124 through 122 and 126; users 126 through 124 and 130; and so on.

The extended social network server 120 allows users to register their identities from different social networks and to merge different social groups into one large extended social network. More details on the architecture of the extended social network server 120 are shown below with respect to fig. 5 and 6.

Users create content on different social networking sites. Ratings, reviews, and wish lists are some popular ways to create user-generated content. For example, in the photo sharing and blogging arts, Flickr^TMAnd Xanga^TMBoth of which are embeddedA social network. To share Flickr^TMPhoto of (A) or Xanga^TMThe potential viewer needs to be a registered user and needs to be tagged as a friend of the author or have subscribed to the author's content on each site. This process must be repeated on each closed content system. In contrast, according to one embodiment, a social relationship need only be registered once. In the above example, each user registers his Flickr^TMAnd Xanga^TMIdentity, and sharing occurs automatically. In addition, the user's friends do not need to register on Flickr or Xanga to subscribe to updates of the user's content. Once a relationship is established once, all of the content generated by the user at any social networking site is available to their friends (or in other words, all those linked to the user via any social network).

Typically, a user accesses content via a browser 134 running on a computer display 132. In other embodiments, the content may be obtained via a mobile phone, laptop, handheld computer, etc., or via a browser, email, blog, feeds (feeds), etc.

FIG. 2 illustrates user social relationships and user-generated content. FIG. 2 illustrates the concept of imposing a social network on user-generated content that is currently partitioned among different network sites. In this figure, user 202 has 5 friends, 204, 206, 208, 210, and 212, and three friends of friends, 214, 216, 218, who have produced multiple types of content at multiple sites. User 202 is able to search or browse content generated by his friends, friends of friends, and the like, as well as any subset thereof. In this example, user 202 is able to access content from friends of user 202, e.g., Amazon^TMWish list, Yelp^TMComment, Wall Street Journal^TM(WSJ) review, Yahoo!^TMShopping comments, etc., or access content from friends of friends, e.g., content created by user 218, San Jose Mercury News (SJMN) comments, or Yahoo!^TMAnd (4) travel planning of travel.

FIG. 3 illustrates how identities from different social networks are related to rules to access or share information, according to one embodiment. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that this is one example for organizing information from the extended social network server 120 in FIG. 1, but other data structures can be applied as long as the principles described herein are maintained.

Initially, a user registers 302 with an extended social network server. In another embodiment, the extended social network structure is implemented on top of an existing social networking site, and thus registration is not required for those users who are already part of the social networking site.

Each user registers their identity with one or more social networking sites. In FIG. 3, user 1 registers 304 id1 for social network 1, id2 for social network 2, and id3 for social network 3. Users may subscribe to feeds of content based on their interests, or conduct ad-hoc (ad-hoc) searches of user-generated content on all or any subset of user-generated content hosting websites known to the system. The ongoing feed of information is stored in the system as access rules 310 that define parameters related to author, category, keyword, site, source, etc.

Privacy is an important consideration for many users. The system allows the user (owner of the user-generated content) to specify what to share and to whom to share. In one embodiment, sharing is specified by the following parameters: content, sharing goals, and identifying options. The content component specifies a subset of the user's content and may include all content, content in a given category (e.g., all my restaurant reviews), or content at a certain site (e.g., all my Yelp reviews). The sharing target specifies friends with whom the specified content is shared, such as "friends of all friends", "all friends", or "Alice and Bob". The identification option specifies whether to display the identity of the content owner to the sharing target. Com, Bob123 is assuming that it is sharing his yelp comments with Alice. Com will see that the comments of Bob123 are marked as friends' comments if Bob123 chooses not to share his identity. Also, if Alice searches for content authored by Bob123, then zero results will be returned. If Bob123 chooses to share his identity, then Alice will see that Bob 123's identity is associated with Bob 123's comment.

These restrictions on sharing are stored as sharing rules 308. Additionally, rules may enable sharing within a user-generated classification of content, such as "disclose all my books purchased," or impose specific restrictions on content that cannot be shared, such as "do not share I'm Yahoo! Purchase of books on shopping that are related to cancer ".

FIG. 4A illustrates a search user interface 402 to access UGC in one embodiment. The input window 404 allows the user to specify keywords to delimit the content of interest. Other search parameters are available, such as category 406, relationship 408, site 410, date 412, result ranking 414, author 416, frequency 418, and author age range 420. In other embodiments, a subset of these parameters may be provided to the user, or additional search parameters can be added to further delimit the search.

Search options may be entered via drop-down menus (406, 408, 410, 412, and 418), input fields (404, 416, and 420), buttons (414), and the like. In other embodiments, the search options may be provided in different formats, depending on the needs of the developer. Fig. 4A illustrates a search window that may be used to search both content or subscribe to feeds. In other embodiments, the search window for on-demand searching has a different interface than the feed subscription window. A user requesting "monthly" in the frequency 418 domain will cause the extended social network server to create a feed subscription for the user. On the other hand, a user selection of "search now" will cause the server to perform an instant search according to the given parameters.

FIG. 4B shows a sample UGC 424 being displayed to a user in one embodiment. The heading 422 row shows the fields of the UGC shown below. In this embodiment, author, relationship, site, date and category are shown. UGC results 426 are shown in list form. Each entry in the list has a header row and a UGC summary. The title line depicts the items corresponding to the title 422 line. For example, friend (2) means that author Bob123 is a friend of depth 2, or in other words, a friend of a friend. In this embodiment, the requestor can specify the depth of the search as friends, friends and friends of friends, and so on. Since extended friend circles grow exponentially with increasing depth, a practical limit 3 for search depth is applied.

Within content 426, the UGC is displayed after the title. In this embodiment, only the beginning of the UGC is shown, along with the option to view the links for the remaining portion, while in other embodiments, the entire UGC is shown.

FIG. 5 depicts the architectural components according to one embodiment of the extended social network Server 120. It should be noted that the system can be implemented as a component of an existing social network (e.g., Yahoo | mask, Facebook, etc.), or as a lightweight (light weight) social network. If the system is part of an existing social network, the system is already aware of the structure of the social network. The user will register the identity on his external content site on registration server 502 and specify what type of content from the user will be shared with what subset of friends (e.g., share all my content with all my immediate friends; only allow Alice and Bob to subscribe to my content; only share my content on Yelp with friends of friends and not show my identity with the content), etc. If the system is not part of an existing social network, a new social network is created and the user will also register their friends, which may be identified by their email addresses, for example.

The registry server 502 generates user metadata for different user identities contained in multiple social networks. The crawler accesses different social networks and finds friends of the registered user. This information is combined together to form an extended social network, as described below with respect to FIG. 6. Crawler 506 also accesses content sites to search for content. For each retrieved content, a site-specific authorship (e.g., yelp id of an author of one yelp comment) is extracted and associated with the content. Crawler 506 also schedules itself to crawl regularly in order to detect new content. Rather than running a powerful web crawl on a site, some content sites have an Application Program Interface (API) that can be used to retrieve content. The content found by crawler 506 is stored in user content database 508.

Search/browse engine 512 provides a user interface to search or browse the UGC collected by the crawler. In the first mode, search/browse engine 512 performs a general search for UGC, which does not utilize the user's social network. Search/browse engine 512 works with the full set of UGCs collected by the crawler. The user may perform a keyword query (e.g., "san francisco hotel," "apple iphone"), optionally, as described previously with respect to fig. 4A, may include parameters such as category (e.g., hotel), content creation date (e.g., 6 months or more), site source (e.g., only on Y-trip and Yelp), and so forth. If the UGC is shared by friends, the identity of the friends is displayed next to the content.

In the second mode, search/browse engine 512 only searches for UGC generated by the user's social network. The user may select more or less restrictive (e.g., friends of friends, or only specific immediate friends). It should be noted that in this mode, the system only shows content that has been shared with the user by the friend that generated the content.

Subscription server 510 enables users to subscribe to content and receive feeds containing UGC of interest. Interests may be indicated by keyword queries (e.g., "san francisco hotel," "apple iphone"), categories (e.g., hotel), social network scopes (e.g., all content, all friends, specific friends), and one or more sites. After the crawler completes the regularly scheduled crawl, subscription server 510 performs all user interest requests. If a given request produces a new content result, the new result is saved in a database or sent to the subscriber.

Subscription server 510 can also generate recommendations using collaborative techniques. Conventional collaborative filtering techniques work by: the user is found in a large set of users that are considered "similar" to the requester, and then looks at what the "similar" user prefers to make recommendations to the requester. For example, Yahoo! Music compares music preferences and ratings from millions of users in order to calculate recommendations. These millions of users are anonymous and therefore untrusted. People are often more interested in recommendations from known people than from strangers. The subscription server 510 can effectively narrow down the set of users for recommendation calculations to users closer to the requester in real life (e.g., friends, or friends of friends). Thus, recommendations may be more relevant while being more authoritative. For example, with millions of anonymous Yahoo! The user of the music suggests that the requester may prefer Jay-Z this is more relevant if the friend of the requester suggests that the requester may prefer Jay-Z.

Subscription server 510 is also capable of calculating trend information by analyzing the user's activities. For example, the user may be notified of: her two friends have recently written comments about restaurant X in san francisco, or "transformers" is the highest rated movie of the user's friends.

The extended social network server 120 shown in FIG. 5 is also capable of generating behavioral data. The aforementioned components rely on user-generated content that is publicly available on the internet. If the server 120 is operated by the same entity as the content web site, the server 120 can utilize non-publicly available behavior information recorded by the content web site server. If server 120 has access to product reviews in a shopping site, server 120 can access user behavior data in the shopping site, such as a history of product purchases or page views. The server 120 utilizes the information and makes the information available to users in a given user's social network. For example, the system may display trends (three friends recently viewed the apple iPhone's product page) and the system may allow the user to conduct searches related to purchases in the shopping site (find friends who have purchased the apple iPhone). This is also available to sites that are not user-generated content. For example, if a user allows sharing of their news story browsing history, the system can recommend news stories to other users based on the user's friends' browsing history.

FIG. 6 illustrates a process of combining social information from different networks and collecting UGC. Three social networks Facebook 112, Yahoo! Group (YAHOO! GROUPS)114, and Google group (GOOGLE GROUPS)116 have users and content to be captured by the extended social network server. Users have one or more identities in the social networks 112, 114, and 116. For illustration purposes only, the user id is formed by adding a name to a number. The same name but a different number id than the name is attached to represents a different identity of the same user in a different social network. For example, Bob has the identity Bob456 in Facebook 112, and Yahoo! Group 114 has an identity Bob123 and no identity in Google group 116.

Under each user, those users who have been registered as friends are set. For example, Bob123 has friends Al2, Carl2, and Dan1, all in the same social network 114. In addition, some users have created content associated with their id, such as Bob 123's UGC 608. In this case, users Bob, Al, Carl, and Pam19 have registered with the extended social network. Pam has two ids, Pam5 and Pam19, but wishes to keep its identity Pam5 secret, so Pam only registers Pam 19.

The crawler shown in FIG. 5 collects different relationships for registered users and ties them together under unique identities, as shown in the user metadata 504 table. For example, Bob has registered and given his password ("whocares") the identity Bob456 from Facebook 112 (denoted f.bob456), and from Yahoo |! The identity Bob123 of the group 114. Al has registered for use by Yahoo! Identity Al2 and Al1 from Google group.

In the integration process, the system utilizes information related to multiple identities from the user and their social networks to create an extended social network. Here, Bob's network includes Carl (which has registered and listed all of its identities, and therefore need not list all of the identities of Carl), f.hugh7 (found in Facebook, but uses the identity from Facebook because Hugh is unregistered), Al (registered), and y.dan1 (unregistered user found in Yahoo). The network of Pam includes only Al, which is found on Google. Pam5 is not in the system; thus Pam has privacy with respect to this identity. Hugh7 was found because he was a friend of Bob on Facebook, which resulted in f.hugh7 being added to the system, and the network of f.hugh7 on Facebook was also recorded (Carl and Lee 2). It should be noted that this example assumes that the system is asymmetric, i.e., a friend of the user does not imply that the friend has the user as a friend. Or simply stated, simply because Hugh is a friend of Bob does not mean that Bob is a friend of Hugh. In another embodiment, the relationship is symmetric, and in our example, it means that Bob will be added as one of the friends of Hugh7, because Hugh7 is a friend of Bob.

In another embodiment, if the crawler cannot access existing relationships in the social network, the user may identify their friends when registered. In another embodiment, the user provides a password for each of the different identities to enable the crawler to access its information in the social network.

As previously described, in addition to user metadata, the user also collects UGC 508 via crawler 506. The content is related to the owner based on the identities and relationships available in the user metadata 504.

FIG. 7 illustrates a process flow for accessing trusted UGC in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. At operation 702, a user registration is received, such as the process described above with respect to FIG. 6. The registration information includes one or more identities of each user in different social networks. As shown by servers 112, 114, 116 in FIG. 1, the social network is hosted by a social networking site.

At operation 704, the crawler collects social relationships corresponding to the identities registered in operation 702 by accessing social networking sites. The collected information is processed in operation 706 and an extended social network is created, as previously described with respect to user metadata 504 in fig. 5 and 6.

At operation 708, the crawler collects UGC by visiting a social networking site. As previously described, the crawler may utilize an API or brute force scan to collect UGC. At operation 710, the user information and the collected UGC are associated, the author is considered a registered user regardless of where the content was created, and access is given to other users regardless of where their social relationships were established.

At operation 712, the user defines the type of UGC that he wishes to access, and the UGC is filtered according to its definition. Access can be on demand, or feeds of information can be delivered to the requesting user on a regular basis. The filtered content is then presented to the requesting user at operation 714, for example, in a browser window of the user's computer.

Embodiments of the invention may be practiced with a variety of computer system configurations, including hand-held devices, microprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like. The invention can also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a wire-based or wireless network.

With the above embodiments in mind, it should be understood that the invention is capable of use with a variety of computer-implemented operations, including data stored on computer systems. The operations are those requiring physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, though not necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical or electromagnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared, and otherwise manipulated.

Any of the operations described herein (which form part of the invention) are useful machine operations. The invention also relates to an apparatus or device for performing these operations. The apparatus may be specially constructed for the required purposes, or it may be a general purpose computer selectively activated or configured by a computer program stored on the computer. In particular, various general-purpose machines may be used with computer programs written in accordance with the teachings herein, or it may be more convenient to construct a more specialized apparatus to perform the required operations.

The invention can also be embodied as computer readable code on a computer readable medium. The computer readable medium is any data storage device that can store data which can thereafter be read by a computer system. Examples of computer readable media include hard disks, Network Attached Storage (NAS), read-only memory, random-access memory, CD-ROMs, CD-R, CD-RWs, magnetic tapes, and other optical or non-optical data storage devices. The computer readable medium can also be distributed over network coupled computer systems so that the computer readable code is stored and executed in a distributed fashion.

Although the method operations are described in a particular order, it should be understood that other housekeeping operations may be performed during the interval of the operation, or the operations may be adjusted so that they occur at slightly different times and then dispatched in a system that allows processing operations to occur in multiple intervals associated with the processing, so long as the processing of the overlay operation is performed in the desired manner.

Although the foregoing invention has been described in some detail for purposes of clarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes and modifications may be practiced within the scope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the present embodiments are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims.

Claims (22)

1. A method of accessing trusted User Generated Content (UGC), the method comprising:

receiving user registration information, the registration information including one or more identities for each user, each identity corresponding to a social network facilitated by one of a plurality of social networking sites;

collecting social relationships corresponding to the identity of each user from the plurality of social networking sites;

creating a user-extended social network for said each user by combining the collected social relationships;

collecting UGC from the plurality of social networking sites;

correlating the collected UGC with the extended social network to identify an author of the UGC;

filtering the correlated UGC according to access rules defined by the requesting user and according to sharing rules defined by the author of the UGC, the access rules and the sharing rules being defined in any one of the plurality of social networking sites or on an extended social networking server;

providing UGC to the requesting user, the UGC presentable on a display.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the user registration information further comprises,

receiving a user ID for each identity, an

If the user provides a password, collecting the password associated with the user ID.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein collecting social relationships further comprises,

the existing user social relationships in each social networking site are collected.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the user-extended social network further comprises one of,

extend existing social networks to include the collected social relationships and UGC, or

Creating a new social network to manage the user's extended social network.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein collecting UGC further comprises,

only content allowed by the content owner is collected.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein collecting UGC further comprises collecting social networking site content using a web crawling algorithm.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein collecting UGC further includes collecting social networking site content using an Application Programming Interface (API).

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the UGC is one of a rating, a review, or a wish list.

9. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the UGC contains information about at least one topic from a group comprising,

travel, restaurant, shopping, product, service, community, politics, employment, or website.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein correlating further comprises,

each item of the collected UGC is associated with all identities registered for the user that authored the item.

11. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein filtering the correlated UGC further comprises sharing UGC according to an authoring user's privacy option selected from the group consisting of: content selection, target user or author identification.

12. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein filtering the correlated UGC further includes imposing restrictions on specific UGC that cannot be shared according to privacy options of an author of the UGC.

13. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein filtering the correlated UGC further comprises utilizing a search parameter to filter the UGC.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein providing content further comprises,

accessing content on demand, an

The information is filtered using the search parameters.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein providing content further comprises,

receiving a request from a requesting user to subscribe to a service of feeds,

filtering the feed content according to the access rules, an

The filtered feed content is presented.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein providing content further comprises giving recommendations from authors having preferences similar to those from users.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising,

providing behavioral data obtained from the extended social network.

18. A system to access trusted UGC, the system comprising:

a plurality of social networking sites;

a registration server to receive user registration information, the registration information including one or more identities for each user, each identity corresponding to a social network facilitated by one of the plurality of social networking sites;

a crawler that collects UGC and social relationships corresponding to each user identity from the plurality of social networking sites;

a user metadata database comprising for each user an extended social network of the user created by combining the collected social relationships, the collected UGC related to the extended social network, and further comprising user privacy preferences;

a user content database comprising UGC obtained by the crawler;

a search engine that filters the correlated UGC according to access rules defined by a requesting user, the access rules defined in any of the plurality of social networking sites or on an extended social networking server; and

a display to provide the UGC to a requesting user.

19. The system of claim 18, further comprising

A subscription server that enables users to subscribe to a service of feeds, the feeds being filtered according to the access rules and presented to requesting users after being filtered.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the crawler collects user social relationships existing in each social networking site.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the crawler collects UGC using a web crawling algorithm to collect content of social networking sites.

22. The system as recited in claim 18, wherein the UGC contains information about at least one topic from a group comprising,

travel, restaurant, shopping, product, service, community, politics, employment, or website.