Abstract: The techniques, methods and systems described herein facilitate the automated discovery and presentation of content created, published or otherwise made public by “experts” and key influencers on particular topics. As such, users that may be interested in particular topics but may not know who to connect with in order to receive the most pertinent information can receive highly-relevant information. Embodiments of the invention use topics of interest identified by the user and/or automatically identifies topics based on previous postings, communication, contacts, etc. Individuals, companies, organizations and other entities that have been recognized as highly influential in those topics are identified and, without explicit actions by the user, adds content generated by the influential entities to the user's content data feed.

Abstract: A social network aggregation platform collects user generated content from multiple disparate social network platforms. The platform includes methods and systems for maintaining and applying user-selected and/or platform-specific privacy settings to the content when distributed or published. User privacy settings are compiled across platforms and used as a filter list against user-generated content. As a content stream is ingested into a platform, the source(s) of the invention content items are checked and the appropriate privacy settings are applied.