Scoring trustworthiness, competence, and/or compatibility of any entity for activities including recruiting or hiring decisions, composing a team, insurance underwriting, credit decisions, or shortening or improving sales cycles

Abstract

Systems and methods for recruiting, counter-terrorism/security, insurance underwriting, sales and marketing improvement, decisioning financial transactions and collections, and social scoring are provided. Machine learning can assign connectivity values to other community members, including individuals, companies, products, brands, cities or neighborhoods, etc. Connectivity values may be automatically harvested from or assigned by third parties or based on the frequency and/or type of interactions between community members. Connectivity values may represent such factors as alignment, reputation within the community, degree of trust, competence at one or more skills, or compatibility with others. The degree and type of connectivity between two entities may be assessed by computing a connectivity value based upon connections between entities and relative or absolute trust, competence and/or compatibility features of the connections. Connectivity values identify best prospects (customers, hires, dates), find off-grid people, underwrite insurance, ‘decision’ loans & collections, shorten sales cycles, etc.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for facilitating financial transactions comprising:
 transmitting, to a first user and potential members of a publication group, software for communications relating to trust-based transactions;   receiving with a server, a request from the first user's software to initiate a first trust-based transaction;   automatically determining a publication group to publish at least some information relating to the transaction, wherein determining the publication group comprises:
 accessing, with at least one server, information in a datastore relating to a network community; 
 identifying, with the at least one server, paths in the network community from the first user to at least one potential member of the publication group; and 
 identifying sub-processes required to calculate a connectivity value between the first user and the at least one potential member, wherein identifying the sub-processes comprises:
 identifying a plurality of links in the identified paths; 
 for one or more identified links, accessing a data structure to identify nodes connected to the identified link; and 
 for each identified node, creating an indication of a sub-process, wherein the sub-process comprises calculating an out-link weight for one or more out-links of the identified node; 
 distributing the indications of the sub-processes to a plurality of processors arranged in a parallel computational framework; 
 receiving, from the plurality of processors, calculated out-link weights for the identified nodes; 
 calculating the connectivity value based on the calculated out-link weights; and 
 adding the at least one potential member to the publication group based on the calculated connectivity value; 
 
   publishing the information relating to the transaction to the publication group; and   transmitting, to the publication group's software, information related to the transaction with which information a member of the publication group may initiate a second trust-based transaction.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising determining whether the first transaction is public, and
 performing the steps of automatically determining a publication group and publishing the information, only if the first transaction is public. 
 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein publishing the information comprises publishing a link to an application related to the first transaction. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 3 , wherein the published link allows the member of the publication group to access the application by activating the link. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising pre-populating at least some information in the second transaction with information from the first transaction. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1  wherein determining the publication group comprises comparing the determined connectivity value to a threshold connectivity value. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1  wherein determining the publication group comprises determining a threshold path weight value. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1  wherein determining the publication group comprises accessing attribute flag information associated with the first transaction, wherein the attribute flag information is indicative of at least other users who may be interested in the first transaction. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 8  wherein the attribute flag information identifies at least one affinity group whose members may be interested in the first transaction. 
     
     
         10 . An system for facilitating financial transactions comprising processing circuitry configured to:
 receive with a server, a request from the first user's software to initiate a first trust-based transaction;   automatically determine a publication group to publish at least some information relating to the transaction,   wherein determining the publication group comprises:
 accessing, with at least one server, information in a datastore relating to a network community; 
 identifying, with the at least one server, paths in the network community from the first user to at least one potential member of the publication group; and 
   identifying sub-processes required to calculate a connectivity value between the first user and the at least one potential member,   wherein identifying the sub-processes comprises:
 identifying a plurality of links in the identified paths; 
 for one or more identified links, accessing a data structure to identify nodes connected to the identified link; and 
 for each identified node, creating an indication of a sub-process, 
   wherein the sub-process comprises calculating an out-link weight for one or more out-links of the identified node;   distributing the indications of the sub-processes to a plurality of processors arranged in a parallel computational framework;   receiving, from the plurality of processors, calculated out-link weights for the identified nodes;   calculating the connectivity value based on the calculated out-link weights; and   adding the at least one potential member to the publication group based on the calculated connectivity value;   publish the information relating to the transaction to the publication group; and   transmit, to the publication group's software, information related to the transaction with which information a member of the publication group may initiate a second trust-based transaction.   
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to determine if the first transaction is public, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to at least determine the publication group and publish the information relating to the first transaction to the publication group in response to determining that the first transaction is public. 
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the processing circuitry is configured to publish the information by publishing a link to an application related to the first transaction. 
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 12 , wherein the published link allows the member of the publication group to access the application directly from activating the link. 
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 10 , wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to pre-populate at least some information in the second transaction with information from the first transaction. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 14 , wherein the processing circuitry is configured to pre-populate at least some information by pre-populating at least a principal amount. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine the publication group by comparing the determined connectivity value to a threshold connectivity value. 
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine the publication group by determining a threshold path weight value. 
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the processing circuitry is configured to determine the publication group by accessing attribute flag information associated with an application related to the first transaction, wherein the attribute flag information is indicative of other users who may be interested in the application. 
     
     
         19 . A method for facilitating financial transactions comprising:
 transmitting, to a first user and potential members of a publication group, software for communications relating to trust-based transactions;   receiving with a server, a request from the first user's software to initiate a first trust-based transaction;   determining whether the first transaction is public;   if the first transaction is public, automatically determining a publication group to publish at least some information relating to the transaction, wherein determining the publication group comprises:
 accessing, with at least one server, information in a datastore relating to a network community; 
 identifying, with the at least one server, paths in the network community from the first user to at least one potential member of the publication group; and 
 identifying sub-processes required to calculate a connectivity value between the first user and the at least one potential member, wherein identifying the sub-processes comprises:
 identifying a plurality of links in the identified paths; 
 for one or more identified links, accessing a data structure to identify nodes connected to the identified link; and 
 for each identified node, creating an indication of a sub-process, wherein the sub-process comprises calculating an out-link weight for one or more out-links of the identified node; 
 distributing the indications of the sub-processes to a plurality of processors arranged in a parallel computational framework; 
 receiving, from the plurality of processors, calculated out-link weights for the identified nodes; 
 calculating the connectivity value based on the calculated out-link weights; and 
 adding the at least one potential member to the publication group based on the calculated connectivity value. 
 
   
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 19  further comprising:
 if the first transaction is public: 
 publishing the information relating to the transaction to the publication group; and
 transmitting, to the publication group's software, information related to the transaction with which information a member of the publication group may initiate a second trust-based transaction.