TOOL FOR REAL-TIME GRAPHICAL EXPLORATION OF INTERCONNECTED FRIENDS AND GROUPS

摘要

The present invention is direct to a Live Network Explorer (LNE) which allows users to graphically navigate through a web of interconnected friends on a gaming console. The LNE provides a real-time graphical representation of friend-of-friend relationships, with the currently-viewed user as a visual node in the screen center. The center node is surrounded by nodes representing that user's friends. Real-time animation is used to represent transitions as the user navigates from person to person. The LNE also represents groups as a visual node in this graphically interconnected web so that the user can travel to a group that a person belongs to, and can see all the people inside the group by connections. The user can navigate to any of these people in the group. The user can click on a person to bring up their digital identity details.