US Patent 7999728 Granularity control in publishing information

A system and method for sharing user information between online services may determine a degree of relationship between the services to determine how much, and what precision level, of user information should be shared. In one example, the user information may be global positioning system (GPS) location information for the user, and requesting users (or systems) receive different levels of the location information based on their respective relationships to the user and/or the user's online information service. The relationship between services may be user-defined using onscreen graphical tools. The determination may also include determining the levels of activity of users at the services, whereby information regarding less active users is less detailed than information regarding active users.