Patent attributes
Users create profiles containing their interests, professional qualifications, and/or personal information. When users encounter each other in the virtual environment, the information contained in the personal profiles is used to provide visual indications of the profile information so that other users know some modicum of information about the user associated with the Avatar. The user associated with the personal profile may control what information is provided publicly and what information is provided privately. Information in other users' profiles may be filtered to enable relevant information to be presented to the user. Filtering may be explicit and based on user-defined criteria. Filtering may be inherent as well and implemented to select visual indications based on similarities between the user's profile information and the other users' profile information. Inherent matching of attributes may be exact, based on pre-defined similarities or groups, or based on learned similarities between types of attributes, or based on previous interactions of the user with other users in the virtual environment.
