Patent 9870424 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on January, 2018 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A ranked set of users may be calculated from an expertise categorization for each user and a person's trust in the users for specific categories. The ranked set of users may be used for presenting search results, recommendations, social marketing, or other uses. A person's reputation may be determined through various online activities. A person's trust in another person may be related to their proximity and activity in one or more social networks.