Abstract: A social incentive system is described herein that formalizes information propagation through social networks in a structured and systematic way. The system provides incentives and rewards to entities who participate in propagating the information, allowing heavy influencers to gain from their influence while the marketer rewards them. The system provides one or more tools for creation and design of social incentive plans with rewards for socially distributing information, including marketing campaigns. In particular, the system introduces a semantic framework where marketers can create structured incentive plans for rewarding consumers and distribution platforms for distributing information through social networks. As users complete specified activities they earn points, and the points can be redeemed for various incentives, such as cash, debit cards, prizes, merchandise, subscriptions, and so forth. The framework is robustly designed to avoid abuse and allow for fraud detection.

Abstract: A social network marketplace may monitor communications between an advertiser and a consumer by generating signatures for communications and tracking those signatures through social network communications until a sale may be consummated. The marketplace may monitor the transactions to determine a user's influence on other users. A user's influence may also be determined or supplemented by monitoring formal or informal social interactions performed on a computer when those communications are able to be monitored. The influence information may be used to select outbound advertisements to those users who may benefit from an advertisement, as well as to filter inbound advertisements to suit a user or a user's situation.