• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 6, 2010

Marketers have the ability to rank and connect online content in a social graph that ties together people and interests in aggregate. The idea describes a patent for EdgeRank, a ranking search algorithm, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Wowd. The patent becomes available next week, according to Mark Drummond, Wowd's chief executive officer. 

Patent No. 7,716,205 covers a method for ranking Web pages in real-time based on the way people use them. It gives the search engine the ability to mathematically determine, based on anonymous data, if and where people will click, go next, and the connections between like-minded people who have common interests.

Imagine a graph with nodes and lines, where the nodes are Web pages and the lines on the page link to another. A small change somewhere in that graph amplifies that change. Drummond describes it as a volume control that when turned up just a bit has a huge impact downstream somewhere in the graph.

So what's the difference between EdgeRank and Google's link-based ranking algorithm PageRank? Drummond points to the ability of EdgeRank to determine the probability that a person will move from one page to another. "The patent explains how the math determines probability when you know 80% of the people clicked on the first link, the remaining clicked on the second, and no one clicked on the remaining three," he says. "It will allow us to offer ranking that's based on groups of people you might know."

Aside from EdgeRank, Wowd also expects to receive Patent No. 7,716,179. This patent covers a distributed file network that stores and delivers data using a distributed hash table as a way to both reliably store and retrieve data in a distributed cloud. It works similar to Skype, since it operates on a network of software installed on someone's computer, but contributes back to the person visiting public pages.

There is a potential for marketers or agencies to support a "much greener solution" on a distributed file network, according to Susan Doherty, chief marketing officer at Wowd. "Data centers take a lot of energy," she says. "Look at a big data center similar to Facebook, or any data center where they have more than 30,000 servers that pull in and process tons of information. Using Wowd's approach, where they process little idle cycles on individual personal computers, would be equivalent to removing about 35,000 cars off roads daily."