METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM BASED ON TOKEN EXCHANGE

Recommendation system based on the actions of a group of users, and not requiring prior metadata, is provided. The recommendation is not limited to from user-to-item (e.g. media recommendation) type; e.g. from user-to-user (e.g. social networking), from item-to-item (e.g. "see also" in internet shopping) and item-to-user (e.g. advertizing) recommendations are supported. The solution utilizes a set of identifiable tokens, associated with each entity, an entity being either a user or an item. Whenever there is an interaction between entities, either existing token sets are updated or new token sets are created such that after an interaction each interacting entity is associated with a token set which resembles more than before the token set(s) associated with the other interacting entity. Recommendation can be produced by searching best matching token sets on the user-to-item, user-to-user, from item-to-item or item-to-user basis.