Patent attributes
A system is disclosed that identifies early adopter users by creating a directed graph of item access information for an item category and performing a page rank type process on the item access information. This directed graph may be created in a reverse temporal order. The early adopter users can be identified as the users with nodes in the directed graph that have a threshold number or rate of incoming links directly or indirectly pointing towards the nodes. Using the early adopter users as a sample, systems herein can determine whether to recommend an item based on the popularity of the item with respect to the early adopter users. Further, systems herein can determine an inventory level to maintain for an item based on the popularity of the item with respect to the early adopter users.