Tremendous changes have been occurring in the Internet that influence our everyday lives. For example, online social networks and other online communities have become the new meeting grounds. They have been called the new power lunch tables and new golf courses for business life in the U.S. Moreover, many people are using such online social networks and other online communities to reconnect themselves to their friends, their neighborhood, their community, and the world.
The development of such online social networks and other online communities touch countless aspects of our everyday lives, providing instant access to people of similar mindsets, and enabling us to form partnerships with more people in more ways than ever before. For example, an increasing number of people are creating and/or visiting network blogs (or web logs). Briefly, a blog is a website where a user may provide commentaries, news, graphics, videos, or the like, in a journal style. Such entries may be on virtually any subject, including food, politics, movies, movie stars, videos, music, gambling, shopping, politics, or even personal online diaries. Blog readers can usually post messages related to one or more entries by blog author. Other online communities include online game systems, e-commerce systems, wikis, messaging systems, or other systems that enable groups of users to interact with each other about a particular website, blog, article, product, service, widget, topic, image, audio content, or the like.
Some online communities give a general idea of which web pages, news stories, web searches, or other activity on a particular community is most popular among visitors that particular community. For example, some news websites list the most popular news stories carried on a particular news website. However, a member of multiple online communities generally does not know what is most popular in another community without visiting that online community. If the member participates in a number of communities, the member generally must visit all of the desired communities to obtain the information for each one. However, that information may change quickly at the various communities. There is generally no way for a member of one community to monitor actions occurring in other online communities to which the member belongs. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention is directed.