PROPAGATING AND RESPONDING TO ANNOUNCEMENTS IN AN ENVIRONMENT HAVING PRE-ESTABLISHED SOCIAL GROUPS

摘要

Strategies are described for propagating and responding to announcements within an environment having pre-established social groups, such as pre-established instant messenger social groups. More specifically, a member within a group can create an announcement, whereupon the announcement becomes associated with the member's identity.. The member can then propagate that announcement out as part of their identity to members within the member's immediate social order group. If the member so authorizes, the announcement can also be propagated out to other social groups linked to the member's immediate social group. A member within the immediate social group or one of the linked social groups can responds to the announcement. The use of pre-established social groups to transact announcement-related exchanges provides a level of trust not offered by conventional network-based messaging and merchandising services.