WO2006030427A2 - An electronic commerce accelerator - Google Patents

Abstract

An Electronic Commerce Accelerator comprising an electronic telecomminications protocol between an e-commerce engine and an instant messenger coordinator; and the protocol includes, for a transaction between a user and the e-commerce engine, the instant messenger coordinator performing the steps of (A) authenticating the user’s ID, (B) accessing a substantially current profile of the user’s commercial relationships with other users, (C) establishing entry for the user to the e-commerce engine, and (D) in case of a predetermined behavior action or of a financial transaction between the user and the e-commerce engine, preserving a record of commercial benefits accruing to the user or to the other users according to said commercial relationships. Preferably, the relationships collectively configure to resemble a multi-level marketing arrangement. Embodiments of the coordinator, preferably a secure modular software entity, may reside as a server in a data communication topology of the engine, or it may reside as a front end to the engine or as a front end to a user apparatus.

Description

AN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE ACCELERATOR

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention generally relates to meta-level electronic-commerce relations management. Simply stated, the present invention relates to accelerating transaction volume in electronic commerce through a structured convergence of electronic commerce with trust- based communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to real time financial transaction revenue distribution record keeping for hierarchically related commercial entities having a point-of-contact representative on the one side and at least one consumer of goods and/or services on another side.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

In order to appreciate the instant invention, one needs to appreciate the state of various component technologies, and to realize that tools to facilitate progress in their efficient convergence have not been forthcoming. These component technologies include telecommunications infrastructures and marketing systems. The following are relevant examples of such components, from the prior art. What we will observe in these references is that the component technologies are well developed, however their symbiotic integration into a viable convergence technology has not been forthcoming.

US 6,421,648 Data processing system for the management of a differential continuous compensation plan generally relates to embodiments of a data processing system for managing a compensation plan for a plurality of participants to an MLM or network marketing approach wherein a profit margin is to be distributed among the participants said data processing system comprising: a) computer processor means for processing data; b) storage means for storing data on a storage medium; c) means for initializing the storage medium; d) first means for processing data regarding the registration of each participant and the generation of a specific ID number for each participant; e) second means for processing data to ensure that any new participant is introduced by a previously registered participant; f) third means for processing data regarding purchases of each participant; g) fourth means for processing data regarding the group purchases of each such participant which is the sum of the individual purchases of such participant and the individual purchases of all new participants which were introduced by such participant, or such new participants and so on; h) fifth means for processing data to determine the portion of said margin applicable to the said sum of purchases using a continuous differential method of calculation; i) sixth means for processing data to determine the gross compensation payable to each participant; and j) seventh means for processing data regarding the net compensation of each participant.

US 6,381,582 Method and system for processing payments for remotely purchased goods generally relates to embodiments of a method of processing a payment for a purchase of goods, comprising the steps of: receiving at a point-of-sale system a code relating to a purchase of goods; determining if said code relates to a local order or to a remote order from a remote seller; if said code relates to a remote order, then determining a price for said remote order, generating data to indicate a payment has been received by a third party for said remote order, and transmitting said data to said remote seller.

US 6,782,369 Method for allocating commissions over the internet using defined exclusive sales areas generally relates to embodiments of a method of allocating commissions comprising: providing exclusive geographic distribution/representation areas; recording sales to said exclusive geographic distribution/representation areas placed through an Internet web site; determining a value of said sales to each of said geographic distribution/representation areas; and allocating said commissions based solely on said value of said sales delivered to each of said geographic distribution/representation areas.

US 6,334,111 generally relates to embodiments of a method of allocating commissions for sales made over a computer network comprising: providing a link to a merchant site; attaching a salesperson specific tag to potential customers who select said link, wherein said salesperson specific tag identifies an association between said potential customers and a salesperson who provided said link; and allocating said commissions for purchases made by said potential customers based upon said salesperson specific tag.

US 6,237,961 A method of performance, evaluation and payment of the advertisement in the commercial technique and apparatus generally relates to embodiments of an advertising and marketing coupon comprising: a base coupon sheet having a first imprinted field identifying the coupon and a respective buyer, a labeled second field forming a validation zone, a third field, a fourth field and a detachable fifth field forming a part-coupon; a plurality of recommendation tickets in said third field imprinted with indicia identifying the coupon and corresponding to indicia in said first imprinted field and detachable from said third field for attachment to corresponding part-coupons of other buyers; and a universal ticket in said fourth field imprinted with indicia identifying the coupon and corresponding to indicia in said first imprinted field and detachable from said fourth field and selectively attachable in the respective fifth field of the respective part coupon for a sale involving the respective buyer and in the second field of a base coupon sheet of another buyer.

US 6,446,044 Multi-layer surveying systems and methods with multi-layer incentives generally relates to embodiments of a method of collecting data by a data collector, comprising: receiving first identification information of a first user; receiving second identification information of a second user, the second user being referred to the data collector by the first user; determining whether to receive second user data based on an analysis of the second identification information; rewarding the first user a second amount if the second user data is received; receiving first user data from the first user and rewarding the first user a first amount; receiving third user data from a third user, the third user being referred to the data collector by the second user; rewarding the first user a third amount after the third user data is received; rewarding the second user the second amount after the third user data is received; and rewarding the third user the first amount after the third user data is received.

US 6,134,533 Multi-level marketing computer network server generally relates to embodiments of a system for purchasing electronic products and distributing product-based, multilevel commissions comprising: means for loading an electronic product, a price, and a predetermined commission structure for the electronic product into a sales server; means for purchasing an electronic product, identified in a catalog description page which includes the identification of the seller, by accepting a purchase request, authorizing a purchase, and downloading the electronic product to the purchaser's computer; means for calculating fees and product-based, multilevel commissions for each purchase, wherein the calculation of commissions uses the identification of the seller included with the catalog description page; and means for distributing the calculated fees and commissions to the payees, sellers, and developer; wherein all said means comprising this system can be distributed over one or more computers.

US 6,691,093 Multi-level marketing computer network server generally relates to embodiments of a method for preparing a product-based multilevel marketing catalog description page for a multilevel marketing product or group of products to be sold comprising the steps of: locating and downloading a catalog description page for the multilevel marketing product or group of products said catalog description page having an original seller reference; creating a new product-based multilevel marketing seller reference specific to said multilevel product or group of products for a new seller of said product or group of products, said new seller reference identifying the product or group of products sold with said new seller; altering the catalog description page by substituting said new seller reference for the original seller reference in the catalog description page; and uploading said altered catalog description page to a network site, wherein said altered catalog description page describes the multilevel marketing product or group of products and wherein said locating and downloading, creating, altering, and uploading steps are adapted to be implemented on one or more computers.

US 6,415,265 Multi-level marketing computer network server generally relates to embodiments of a system for purchasing products and distributing product-based, multilevel commissions comprising: means for loading preliminary shipping information into a sales server; means for loading a price, and a predetermined commission structure for the product into a sales server; means for purchasing a product, identified in a catalog description page with a seller identification, comprising: means for accepting a purchase request, means for authorizing a purchase, and means for issuing a shipping order; means for calculating fees and product-based, multilevel commissions for each purchase, wherein the calculation of commissions uses the seller identification from the catalog description page; and means for distributing the calculated fees and commissions to the payees, sellers, and developer; wherein all said means comprising this system are adapted to one or more computers.

US 6,408,281 Multi-level marketing computer network server generally relates to embodiments of a method for purchasing products and distributing product-based, multilevel commissions comprising: step of loading product information, a price for the product, and a predetermined commission structure for the product into a sales server, step of purchasing a product, step of calculating product-based, multilevel commissions and fees for each purchase, step of registering sellers, developers/manufacturers, and other payees, and step of distributing the calculated commissions and fees to the sellers, developer/manufacturer, and other payees; wherein all said steps comprising this method are adapted to one or more computers.

US 6,578,010 Multi-node network marketing computer system generally relates to embodiments of a system under human control for safekeeping network marketing operations, comprising: memory storage means for storing rules used for activating and operating said safekeeping; processing means using said stored rules for activating and operating said safekeeping; processing means using said stored rules for calculating an amount of breakeven funding for a downline member; processing means for calculating a minimum set of prerequisite performance standards for said downline member in accordance with said stored rules; processing means together with data input for verifying member performance standards against said minimum performance standards; processing means for verifying if downline member has met breakeven funding via member's own performance; said processing means for calculating said breakeven funding used for calculating said amount of breakeven funding owed to said performing downline member; processing means for calculating and verifying said breakeven funding performance standards prerequisites said performing downline member owes; means for paying said downline member said breakeven funding; and processing means for verifying that all downline members having met said performance standards prerequisites and due said breakeven funding have received said breakeven funding.

US 6,105,001 Non-cash transaction incentive and commission distribution system generally relates to embodiments of a method of distributing commissions to promote use of a non-cash payment device, comprising the steps of: organizing an electronic database to contain member records, each member record identifying a bearer of the non-cash payment device; establishing a hierarchy of relationships among the member records, and storing positional data in the electronic database in association with the member records; operating a purchase processing terminal to record a purchase by one of the members bearing the non-cash payment device; electronically transmitting transaction data from the purchase processing terminal to a commission management processor connected with the electronic database; operating the commission management processor to determine, on the basis of the transaction data, a business volume value, and to record the business volume value in a member record identifying said one member; determining a commission value for said one member on the basis of business volume values recorded in other member records and on the basis of the positional data relating said one member with the other members in the hierarchy; and effecting a monetary payment in the amount of the commission value to said one member. US 5,537,314 Referral recognition system for an incentive award program generally relates to a credit accumulation and accessing system for a plurality of sponsoring companies and participants having at each sponsoring company location, a common bus, which communicates with participant data input, performance data input, computer processing, memory, an award output device, and an input/output device. Input/output device may connect to a central control center, and/or a plurality of second sponsoring companies, and/or a plurality of financial institutions, through communication lines. Sponsoring company, participant, and performance data, along with award conversion tables, pyramidal association tables, award applicable merchandise UPC codes, financial-institution-issued lines of credit and computer operational programming, are stored. Under control of the operational program several tasks are accomplished accordingly, including, creating subdirectories for a single participant account so as to selectively associate the single account subdirectories with multiple sponsoring company accounts and deciphering such accordingly at points of sale, calculating, posting, and/or issuing discounts, raffle entries, store-credit returns, points, cash values, bill values, in accordance with performance of participants, while sending results immediately and/or periodically to appropriate destinations, which may include computer memory and/or bank accounts and/or plastic cards on behalf of participants, participant sponsors in a pyramidal-type structure, sponsoring companies, sponsoring companies' sponsors in a pyramidal-type structure, raffle sponsors, and redeemed at appropriate locations which may include, sponsoring company, participant, beneficiary, or financial institution bank accounts, sponsoring company locations, designated sponsoring company award output devices, participants' households, beneficiaries' locations, and cash dispensing machines, and received in the appropriate forms, which may include, designated sponsoring company merchandise, wire transfer, check, cash, coupon, certificate, charge card balance reductions, travel tour, or catalog merchandise. More specifically, this invention relate to embodiments of a computer assisted system for a multilevel incentive program for at least one program sponsoring company having individual program participants, comprising: at least: (a) a computer data storage memory having at least data storage areas for storing computer data, wherein at least one of the storage areas comprises a software program for at least determining that a selection of the storage areas are associated with an identifier, said identifier being associated with at least one of the participants; (b) a computer data entry device for registering at least performance data associated with the associated participant, wherein said performance data comprises at least said identifier; (c) a computer data processing device at least having means for communicating with both the storage memory and the entry device and automatically applying at least the software program with said performance data to determine resulting award information to store in the selection of storage areas associated with said identifier; (d) a conveying means for communicating at least the award information appearing in at least one of the selection of storage areas associated with said identifier so as to be received by at least one of the participants who is other than the associated participant, thereby allowing participants other than the associated participant to be rewarded based on performance by the associated participant; (e) a receiving means for receiving the award information appearing in at least one the selection of storage areas associated with said identifier so as to be received by at least one of the participants who is other than the associated participant, wherein the communicated award information is being issued in association with the respective sponsoring company, whereby set forth is a convenient referral recognition system, particularly for use by any of various types of merchants heretofore impeded from competing on a multilevel playing field.

US 20050004840 System and method for mobile telephone text message consumer promotions generally relates to a system for providing an interactive promotion to a mobile device has a text messaging server, promotional content stored in a database and an operations and reporting system for retrieving promotional content from the database and generating text messages based on the promotional content for transmission via the text messaging server. The system provides direct marketing promotional content to a consumer who opts in via a wireless network. The consumer then interacts with the promotional system to receive incentives paid for by the client company. More specifically, this invention relate to embodiments of a system for hosting a direct marketing promotion via a wireless network comprising: an aggregator having one or more gateways for receiving and translating text messages received from SMS networks into a standard message format; one or more application servers for receiving each translated text message and for retrieving promotional content from a database according to information contained in the translated text message. US 6,922,673 Systems and methods for ordering and distributing incentive messages generally relates to embodiments of (in a computer network) a method for distributing an incentive message, the method comprising: providing an incentive message, wherein the incentive message includes a trophy and a negotiable instrument, and wherein the trophy is detachable from the negotiable instrument; receiving a request for the incentive message from a recipient point-of-contact; displaying a data entry form to the recipient point-of-contact over the computer network, wherein the form is for selecting a customized message to appear with the incentive message and for receiving a name for a recipient of the incentive message; printing the received name on the trophy and on the negotiable instrument; displaying a preview of the incentive message over the computer network, wherein the preview includes both the trophy and the negotiable instrument; based at least in part on the displayed preview, receiving approval to transfer the requested incentive message to the recipient point-of- contact; receiving a payment for the requested incentive message; and transferring the requested incentive message to the recipient point-of-contact.

For purposes of brevity, the aforesaid prior art examples have been provided for the convenience of the reader. However, in a more formal sense, these reference and all of the prior art references cites therein are hereby incorporated herein by reference.

Generally, convergence is the core commonality of inventions; certainly at every physical scale - from sub-atomic to extra-societal. Convergence is a unique combination of elements and their respective linkages in the case of devices, systems, apparatus, and the likes - or a unique combination or sequence of steps in the case of methods of manufacturer, business practices, software instantiations, communication protocols and the likes. The goal, in each case, is to contribute to the progress of a respective art, and thereby to advance the advent of further technological convergence. There is, of course, another vantage from which to characterize inventive subject matter - concerning itself with the repositioning of a technology into another circumstance; substantially a new use for a potentially known quantity. Now, in the instance of the present invention, there may be some debate to categorize if the invention is the true convergence of telecommunications infrastructure and marketing system components - or - if the invention is a novel migration of the telecommunications components into the new-use situation of a marketing system application. It is a fundamental observation of the present invention that a quintessential convergence between electronic commerce and trust-based communications (as a marketing system) has surprisingly not been forthcoming - essentially leaving each of the respective components to develop market independent evolutions - without either finding the symbiotic benefits of a structured mutual alignment.

For example, it is reasonable to accept that telecommunications providers have been tireless promoters of their own services, have used their own services as a low cost media available to carry their own promotion, and have created numerous packages of incentives, rebates, and commissions in the process of trying to create a larger customer base, enlarge the package of services that a customer subscribes to, and create customer loyalty - to the extent that the boundaries of their franchise is susceptible to competition. However, even the telecommunications provider has failed to make use of the embedded trust-based communications communities within its very customer base; perhaps because this might be seen as compromising their implied core duty - to protect the confidentiality of communications that they propagate for their customer base.

Simply stated, e-commerce has encountered an invisible barrier to growth, particularly among various demographic groups who are not inclined to trust the quasi-anonymous e- commerce, the security of the payment mechanism interface, nor the protocols for the reversibility of erroneous transactions. Accordingly, we suggest that there is a longstanding need to accelerate the latent economic commerce potential of trust based communications communities, using determinist methods for structured convergence - thereby extending the value chain of economic commerce systems to a broader customer base. In a complementary fashion, there is a longstanding need for introducing economic structuring to the trust based communications communities; so that their respective members may reap the benefits of economic commerce style profits and gain a more reliable access to the goods and services that economic commerce systems provide.

ADVANTAGES, OBJECTS AND BENEFITS OF THE INVENTION

Technical Issues: Embodiments of the present an economically advantageous convergence between on the one hand a plurality of trust- based communities - generally linked mesh-wise - via at least one telecommunications carrier, and on the other hand at least one engine of economic commerce which is linked to at least one of the telecommunications carriers.

Ergonomic Issues: Because the trust based communities are generally overlapping clusters of 30-40 "members", the horizontal integration of such communities as a single mesh will generally provide a marketing group hybridized with a customer community of a global population scale. Accordingly, the easy ergonomics of the communications clusters provides a best enabling front end for the e-commerce engine(s). Furthermore, a primary barrier to growth of e-commerce systems has been a lack of trust between the e-commerce system and a substantial majority of potential customers. The convergence of the instant invention substantially overcomes that barrier.

Economic Issues: Embodiments of the instant invention provide increased transaction volume to e-commerce engines; and preferably provide incentives, rebates and the likes to instant messaging members who interface with the e-commerce engine(s) using one of these embodiments. BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The aforesaid longstanding needs are significantly addressed by embodiments of the present invention, which specifically relate to an Electronic Commerce Accelerator. The instant invention relates to a system for the interface convergence of two well-known protocols via pseudo-gateway architecture; the protocols being those of electronic commerce and of trust- based communications (e.g. Instant Messaging, Short Message Service, VOIP, text-based chat "rooms", multi-media chat "forums" - substantially electronically linked intersecting clusters of friends and/or contacts where there is a presumption of common interest sustained over multiple sessions - generally based on prior acquaintance and often maintained thereafter). In the context of the present invention, trust-based communications is characterized by the typical user maintaining a private list of close contacts. Embodiments of the electronic commerce accelerator of the instant invention, by virtue of there integrating the trust-based channels of instant messaging, are especially useful in man-computer interactions wherein there exists customer resistance to use or to more fully utilize the facile benefits of e- commerce engines for commercial transactions, the provision (purchase, rental, etc.) of goods or services, the actualization of monetary transfers, the payment of bills, the management of stocks or bonds or other commercial instruments, etc.

More particularly (turning now to figures 1-5), the instant invention relates to embodiments of an Electronic Commerce Accelerator comprising a electronic telecommunications protocol between an e-commerce engine 100 and an instant messenger coordinator 110; and the protocol includes, for a transaction between a user 120 and the e-commerce engine via a data- communications topology infrastructure 99, the instant messenger coordinator performing the steps of (A) authenticating 130 the user's ID, (B) accessing 140 a substantially current profile of the user's commercial relationships with other users, (C) establishing 150 entry for the user to the e-commerce engine, and (D) in case of a predetermined behavior action or of a financial transaction between the user and the e-commerce engine, preserving 160 a record of commercial benefits accruing to the user or to the other users according to said commercial relationships. The predetermined behavior may be a marketing activity, or a consumer activity, or participation in a survey, or the likes. The accrued benefit may be financial or incentives like prizes, music downloads, access to a media or to a content stream, etc.

According to one variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator manages a plurality of users and each of said users has a substantially private contact list for establishing communications with users represented by said contact list, and the contact list substantially records communication establishing details of friends or associates of the user who are in frequent communications with the user. It is the intimacy and trust of this list (typically of 20 to 50 "friends", associates, and frequent consultants) that provides a means to overcome the barrier to transacting e-commerce between many potential users and e-commerce engines.

According to another variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator interfaces to an instant messenger module of the user and the module is for transferring content selected from the list: alphanumeric transcriptions, SMS, VOIP, multimedia, and internet compatible user generated data-communications. Essentially, one avenue for actualizing the instant variation embodiment is to provide a secure intermediary module. According to a further variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator is a secure module resident at a data-communications topology enabled apparatus of the user. According to still another variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator is a secure server that is interconnected to a data-communications topology of the user and to a data communications topology of the e-commerce engine. According to yet a further variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator is a secure module of the e-commerce engine. Substantially, the actualization of the embodiments of the instant invention are independent of their physical localization in the data communications infrastructure - so long as the transactions processed there-through are secure, are amenable to allowing nominal or imperceptible delays to e-commerce transactions, and most preferably provide reasonable accountability for the peripheral benefits that may accrue to affiliate or associate members who require relations management for the transfer and/or appropriation of incentives, rebates, or the likes or portions thereof. Relations management include, as a non-limiting example, multi-level marketing - which is part of the preferred embodiment of the instant invention.

As will be further described in the detailed description below, according to another additional variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator further processes applications for new users, and therewith provides for unique ID, and respective password or authentication mechanism, hi the context of this variation embodiment, preferably the instant messenger coordinator further records commercial relationship terms either (A) between at least one of the new users and the user or (B) between at least one of the new users and at least one of the other users. Now, according to additional preferred embodiment varieties herein, the instant messenger coordinator records the relationship terms in a database tree; and independently or in conjunction therewith the instant messenger coordinator records the relationship terms as a grade of membership. According to the preferred embodiment, the grade of membership corresponds to predetermined commercial benefits that the user receives as a result of transactions with the e-commerce engine by the at least one new user. Furthermore, in accordance with this preferred embodiment, the instant messenger coordinator compresses out users of grades lower than a predetermined grade when calculating other predetermined benefits for the user.

Returning to the overall convergence of trust-based communications and electronic commerce, we should note that there are other aspects of modern mercantile organizations that support the aforementioned integration of the instant invention. For example, contemporary best business practices dictate that employee sharing of employer's profits, and often employee ownership participation (ESOP) are powerful motivators; even where the profit sharing is minimal and/or the ownership is typically statically insignificant to alter any mandate of the management or any quality of life of the employee. Furthermore, many of today's mega-venture technology companies (Microsoft, Google, etc.) may never issue dividends to justify the value of the stock that they have issued. Nevertheless, for the employees of such organizations, profit sharing and/or employee stock ownership plans are considered to be a significant part of the employee's compensation package. Furthermore, in many marketing organizations, commissions may be the dominant constituents of the compensation package.

Thus, simply stated, there are internal business relations wherein compensation package combinations are composed of commissions, profit sharing, employee stock ownership, incentives, rebates, and the likes; such that the essential compensation package may lack any predetermined compensation whatsoever. Such business relationships are exclusively contingent upon success. Thus, the fundamental mode of such businesses is not "pay for work" but "pay for results" - wherein risk sharing is a hidden cost that is fairly distributed.

With the globalization of enterprise management and the ongoing complexities of cross licensing agreements, it is clear that individuals may have an equal footing for participating in countless value chains and value networks - along with larger commercial associations, corporations, etc. Substantially, provided with effective infrastructure, the individual is a worthy candidate for a sub-franchise to any business relationship and to any commercial transaction; provided that he accepts the aforesaid indeterminacy of his compensation package as fundamentally acceptable. As such, success oriented employment-relationship arrangements evolve, globalization integrates with electronic commerce, and enterprise management seamlessly interfaces commercial organizations of disparate sizes; and accordingly, many of the heuristics aspects of multi-level management are becoming norms in corporate culture.

Now, much research and development has been devoted to mechanism for dynamically forming and coordinating manufacturing supply webs. However, little beyond the theoretical realm of distributed semi-autonomous holonic-type agents has been created to meet the upcoming needs of marketing and consumer webs. (Management webs are the province of enterprise management tools.) Supply webs have been understood as "autonomous agents that self-organize toward emergent levels of intention beyond the aggregate intentions of its lower level agents. This intention can arise via emergent dynamics coupling with new contextual environments at higher spatial and temporal scales. This coupling can provide top- down constraints that selects among the possible bottom-up emergent states". In a like sense, manufacturing webs, management webs, and marketing webs each respectively encounter virtually identical problems of infrastructure coordination at the data management, transaction, and auditing levels.

"Traditional organization management science is grounded in the paradigm of the organization as machine. As a result, organizations tend to be externally designed and mechanistically regulated via command and control hierarchies. While efficient, these organizations have difficulty adapting in environments of great change." Accordingly, the ordinary man of the art appreciates that dynamically evolving relationship infrastructure support is the key to sustained presence in the global marketplace, even if the occasional mega-corporation creates events that obscure the market astronomer's horizon with black hole M&As, black dwarf equity dilutions, red giant IPOs, and novae bankruptcies.

In the global frame of reference, webs (be they supply, manufacture, management, or marketing) are good candidates for competition with transnational corporate persons in the marketplace. One only need point to the success of the open source initiatives to accept the presumptions of this web-o-nomic paradigm.

Now, the basis of these profound movements in the globalization of so many aspects of the enterprise is certainly the relative un-scalability of information capacity, data processing, and telecommunications; collectively this is the C3 (Command, Control, Communications) that is driving the emergence of confederated enterprise aggregates that successfully compete with the giga-corporations. Accordingly, the ordinary man of these arts readily appreciates that any convergence between a C3 component and a web (management, supply, manufacture, or marketing) is a valid modicum in the progress for sustaining the free market, (hi this context, the onus of funding societal support remains redundantly incompletely divided between governments and employment "consortiums" - in that the long term structural incompatibilities between social security programs and employer supported insurance activities create vacuums in the aether of social equity.) Turning to still another variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator is at least one server interfaced to a data communications topology selected from the list: an internet, a VOIP system, a Chat Room, SMS of a wireless network, and at least one packet in a mesh telephony system. Likewise, according to still another conceptually similar variation embodiment of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator, the instant messenger coordinator is at least one secure module interfaced to a data communications topology selected from the list: an internet, a VOIP system, a Chat Room, SMS of a wireless network, and at least one packet in a mesh telephony system. Substantially, embodiments may localize as an intermediary between a user and an e- commerce engine - where the user and the engine may already be able to communication via a common telecommunications infrastructure media or may require a gateway to interface between two media.

The instant invention also relates to embodiments of an E-Commerce Accelerator comprising (A) an e-commerce system 200 substantially residing on a computer based data- communications topology 99; (B) interfaced to the topology, an intermediary message network relations management tracker 210, and the tracker includes at least one server or secure module for coordinating at least one user group wherein each user has an instant messaging capability with predetermined other users and the capability includes a protocol for forming mutual instant messaging agreements between sets of at least two users in the group, means for maintaining the agreements, and means for instant messaging there¬ between; and (C) apparatus 220 of a customer base of the e-commerce system substantially interfaced to the e-commerce system via an intermediary.

The instant invention furthermore relates to embodiments of a marketing telecommunications system for relations management, by an E-Commerce Accelerator substantially as hereinbefore described and illustrated, and the system is comprising: a message network side 300 and an e-commerce side 310; and the message network side includes a server 320 or secure module coordinated user group wherein each user has a respective instant messaging capability 330 with predetermined other users 340 and the capability includes a protocol 350 for forming mutual instant messaging agreements between sets of at least two users in the group and therewith means for maintaining the agreements, and means 360 for instant messaging there-between; and the e-commerce side is securely interfaced with the messaging side via a data communications network 99, wherein the e-commerce side includes secure mercantile means for transacting the transfer of goods or the provision of services.

The instant invention in addition relates to embodiments of an article of manufacture including a computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for accelerating e-commerce, the computer readable program code in said article of manufacture including: (A) first computer readable program code 400 for causing a computer to first interface with a member of an instant messaging cluster; (B) directly or indirectly tied to the first computer readable software, second computer readable program code 410 for causing the computer to establish and maintain relations management between an account for the member and an account for at least one other member; and (C) directly or indirectly tied to the second computer readable software, third computer readable program code 420 for causing the computer to second interface with an e-commerce engine, thereby substantially facilitating transactions between the member and the engine.

Finally, the instant invention likewise relates to embodiments of a program storage device 500 readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions 510 executable by the machine to perform method steps for accelerating e-commerce, said method steps including: (A) providing 520 an intermediary server or secure module between a member of an instant messaging cluster and an e-commerce engine; (B) establishing and maintaining 530 means for relations management between the member and other members; and (C) facilitating 540 means for secure mercantile transactions between the member and the e- commerce engine; and accruing predetermined benefits to the member or to at least one of the other members according to at least one clause of a commercial agreement peculiar to a transaction thereby facilitated between the member and the e-commerce engine. As in the aforementioned cases, the benefits may be financial or incentives or peripheral participation opportunities, or the likes.

Simply stated, the shunting of all or part of a transaction stream between member of an instant messaging sub-community (cluster) to an e-commerce engine overcomes the barriers of trust there between - a circumstance that is not practical for email - since there the equivalent cluster size is typically susceptible to Spam. Thus, embodiments of the instant invention form a meta-e-commerce system environment operable interfacing on messaging platform(s) for the purpose of facilitating expanded commerce in e-commerce transactions. Substantially, the "shunt" has links to e-commerce transaction gateways, portals, vendors, and the likes. The preferred embodiment combines messaging and e-commerce with shared commission structures from the combination (rebates for users & proportional incentives for generating accepted/used invitations). By tracking relationships of users going into the system - with user categorization techniques (see the 4-components coordinate key structure of the preferred database example of figure 7 - described in detail below) commercial relationship between invitee and inviters of the messenger systems are preserved and multi¬ level marketing is facilitated thereby — which substantially accomplished e-commerce acceleration. FYI - the 4-component key structure may be described as having a left in tree coordinate preserving upper bound, a right in tree coordinate preserving lower bound, a level in tree coordinate and a zone aspect coordinate for use in distributed database integration and coordination. Ordinary data for audit and reporting is therein preserved; including sign-up date, rank-type, classes of users (e.g. member, associate, trial associate, etc.). Compression- ing out lower rank in the tree to provides compensation that reflects best practices for compensation agreements by rank or membership grade, etc. Nevertheless, according to other embodiments recursive tree structures may be used - even if these produce flat index files that are sparse by virtue of the underlying potentially very unbalanced trees.

NOTICES

Numbers, alphabetic characters, and roman symbols are designated herein for convenience of explanations only, and should by no means be regarded as imposing particular order on any method steps. Likewise, the present invention will forthwith be described with a certain degree of particularity, however those versed in the art will readily appreciate that various modifications and alterations may be carried out without departing from either the spirit or scope, as hereinafter claimed. In describing the present invention, explanations are presented in light of currently accepted communications technology theories or mercantile and models. Such theories and models are subject to changes, both adiabatic and radical. Often these changes occur because representations for fundamental component elements are innovated, because new transformations between these elements are conceived, or because new interpretations arise for these elements or for their transformations. Therefore, it is important to note that the present invention relates to specific technological actualization in embodiments. Accordingly, theory or model dependent explanations herein, related to these embodiments, are presented for the purpose of teaching, the current man of the art or the current team of the art, how these embodiments may be substantially realized in practice. Alternative or equivalent explanations for these embodiments may neither deny nor alter their realization.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to understand the invention and to see how it may be carried out in practice, embodiments including the preferred embodiment will now be described, by way of non- limiting example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings. Furthermore, a more complete understanding of the present invention and the advantages thereof may be acquired by referring to the following description in consideration of the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numbers indicate like features and wherein:

Figures 1-2 illustrate schematic views of the Electronic Commerce Accelerator;

Figure 3 illustrates a schematic view of a marketing telecommunications system for relations management - by an electronic commerce accelerator;

Figure 4 illustrates a schematic view of an article of manufacture appurtenance to the electronic commerce accelerator;

Figure 5 illustrates a schematic view of a program storage device Y appurtenance to the electronic commerce accelerator;

Figure 6 illustrates a schematic view of a core construction for relations-management; Figure 7 illustrates schematic aspects of a relations-management database and its typical maintenance transactions; and

Figures 8-12 illustrates schematic views of further aspects of the preferred embodiment of the electronic commerce accelerator integrating relations management according to the relations management database.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

In the context of the instant invention, "IMVITE" (Instant Messaging Platform With Affiliate And Rewards Program) relates aspects, components, extensions, and enhancements of the principal embodiments of the e-commerce accelerator of the instant invention. IMVITE is an E-commerce gateway constructed so that Internet members/users can do their E-commerce through a website tied to an Instant Message (IM) platform. IMVITE accelerates e-commerce by capitalizing on four major trends to create its powerful business model: internet growth, internet home based business growth, instant messaging growth, and viral marketing exceptional results; collective a plurality of trust-based communities.

IMVITE Messenger is supported by technology preferably comprising of 3 key core components:

1. Core messenger application

2. Backend Database Management

3. Front-end web applications

1. Core Messenger Application: This application interfaces with the server front end with authentication (see section below). These special portions that sit at the clients - e.g. persistent cookies or applications - the Instant Messenger is a client application. It is an executable that is downloaded from our server during the user registration process. The executable is installed and executed on the client's computer.

Concerning authentication (see figure 6), there is at least one data-communications interaction (transaction) the electronic commerce engine 600 and and an instant messenger coordinator 610 (server) wherein the coordinator accepts a user ID (name) and password from a user - directs this data to an IM server 620 (internal) which in turn authenticates this name/pw against a last known copy of the database (described in figure 7) 630. If the user and PW verify then the database returns a viable unique correlation code key for that user which may then be between forwarded by the coordinator to the engine - thereby allowing the user to interface with the engine benefits of agreed relations management agreement accrue to himself and to other members; while if the name/pw can not be verified then a adjunct protocol may be initiated to register the user as new - provided that it is established that there were no errors in the name/pw.

The registration of new "members" operate via the messenger or via regular internet the standard registration process is done at the website. Someone comes to the website (www.imvite.com) and enters the registration page, they enter their name, country of residence, email address, and choose a unique username and password. They read and agree to the IMVITE Member or Associate agreement (depending on the type of user they are registering) and then they are taken to download the client application. If the messenger is already installed on the client's computer, and they want to create a new user account, there is a gateway (registration button) from the messenger that points back to the website to complete another registration.

There are 2 types of users on the system: 1 - Members - Free users, who receive rebates on e-commerce transactions initiated from links on the messenger; 2. Associates "IBC Owners"(IMVITE Business Center)- Paying users who receive rebates on their own purchases similar to members, and also commissions on purchases of members and associates in their "downline" (genealogy) per the details of the IMVITE compensation plan - also available on our website.

The commercial transactions between "imvite members" and vendors via the messenger - they can be via the messenger and/or via assigned websites that Associates direct their customers. For example - the IMVITE Shopping Mall has links to hundreds of stores. The shopping mall is located on one of our servers (shopping.imvite.com/username) the instant messenger application sends the logged in user to the link above with their actual username (e.g a user with the unique username "Johnny" clicks on the link to the shopping mall from the messenger application, and is taken to the url shopping.imvite.com/Johnny). Alternatively, an IBC Associate has his/her own website url by appending their username to the standard website url. - e.g. associate username is "getcash" and they direct their customers via advertisements to shopping.imvite.com/getcash. Any purchases made via that url will yield commissions to "getcash" per the terms of the compensation plan. SMS a reasonable substitution for instant messenger - however IM is a superset of SMS - since the latter only works on a mobile platform, whereas IMVITE works on IP, UDP, and Mobile. Email using the address book would not be an adequate substitute for messenger since email is a static method of communication. In the same way that a western union telegraph is not a substitute for a phone call. IM is live and real time with minimal delay between user communications. Simply stated — the size of normal email address books extends far beyond the trust-based communications cluster group for an individual. We could have developed our own messenger application using open source code that allows connectivity to the major IM gateways - using IP and/or UDP. We decided that this part of the IMVITE total technology was easier to license than to build ourselves - since so many core messenger applications already exist. We selected the Instant messenger and licensed their technology to provide a platform for interoperable messaging (AOL, ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN) and to allow for an IMVITE Branded messenger as well. Therefore, users can connect with their IMVITE account to other IMVITE users and to the other public IM' s listed above.

The e-commerce revenues of the business are not limited to IM transactions — as discussed in detail above. Therefore, we are actually augmenting the current e-commerce sphere of business (normally done via web/static websites) and offering a new medium for IBC owners to make money via the IM that is open all the time on the user's PC

The Instantt core application was modified for specific IMVITE use to provide many upgraded features. These features did not exist in Instant and were custom built for IMVITE - RSS News feeds reader, specific "skin" development, "My shops", tabs to IMVITE private label products, etc. Embodiment Features added to the IMVITE Messenger that are developed specifically for IMVITE and are unique to our application (e.g. they are not offered by Instant in their standard application toolset) include:

— SMICONS - smart icons - each user has their own personalized "emoticons" (smileys) based on their own criteria. -RSS News feed - we developed a web application that serves up RSS News headlines and retrieves the full news stories and delivers to the users desktop on demand. Users can select up to 5 standard RSS Feeds that are baked into the application, and/or choose their own RSS feeds by inserting the url for that feed.

—My Shops - Users can select up to 10 stores from the IMVITE Shopping Mall that are their favorites, and save them to a drop down list that is always present on the IM tool.

—User classes, with different skins - Members have a basic "orange" skin, Associate/IBC

Owners have a upgraded "black" skin.

—Google Search - there is a search box on the IM tool that points to Google's server and retrieves results to the users standard browser.

--IMVITE your friends - there is a link that when clicked on, opens the users email client, with a populated message that can be sent to the users contacts and invite them to join

IMVITE.

—ALL of the links to websites on the IM client maintain the knowledge of who is the user logged in to the client. E.g. if a user clicks on the IMVITE Dating link, the url that is opened on the browser will have the username appended to it in a way that if an e-commerce transaction is completed, the user will be tracked and any rebates/commissions will be paid out according to the terms of the IMVITE Compensation Plan.

The IMVITE Messenger needs to track who the user online is. If they click on any buttons for e-commerce, we need to know who they are and send them to the e-commerce partner with relevant info so the commissions can be tracked and paid IMVITE Messenger runs on 2x MS-WINDOWS 2003 servers with an SQL-DB (that is standard to Instan-t). We decided to do the authentication for users on our user DB which is on a different server. We could have put the authentication on the IMVITE messenger server, but then it would not give all the control we need in real time for user levels in the tree. See authentication in the DB section.

2. Backend Database Management (turning attention to figure 7 - wherein the key structure 700 is maintained using a rules set 710 - as per a typical tree example 720 - in order to apply insert operation example 730 or delete operation example 740) All of the logic of the handshake is held in the PHP code on the front end website server pages. The php is driven by user events on the website. E.g. a user comes to the imvite website at www.imvite.com/sponsorname. On the user's entrance to the website, there is a session id that is established from the entering url (e.g. if the user enters on www.imvite.com/johnny, the Apache web server extracts "Johnny" and the PHP code on the entry page sets the sponsor_id for that session = Johnny). A database call is made to being up the record for that sponsor to be used in the session. The user then clicks on the register page (www.imvite.com/register.php). The PHP code on the register page takes the sponsor id information that was established at the beginning of the session, and inserts this new registering member in the database tree under that sponsor. (I will B"N do a diagram on paper to help illustrate this) Our backend is fully in-house developed. We selected Red-Hat Linux running with Apache on an MY-SQL server. We could have selected any JADBMS, but we felt this combination was best for price, performance and scalability.

We need to track each new registration in real-time - to keep the DB tree updated, and to assure that any e-commerce transactions that occur subsequent to registration will be accurately tracked for rebates and commissions payouts when relevant, and insert them into the 'family' tree. When a new user registers, we need to know who is their sponsor, and then place them in under that sponsor in the DB. If there is no sponsor, the user is placed under the company - which is called "frontline".

a. Database Overview:

We have 1 DB for user registration. The DB has been tested with our current DB tree model to support over 1 million users. Our technology is scalable, and the registration server can be daisy-chained for load balance to continue supporting in a centralized way many millions of users. (Red Hat 4 Linux, Apache, My-SQL) We also have 1 DB for Video and Audio messenger support (MS Windows 2003, MS-SQL)

Preferably other servers used for marketing and email purposes. They are all Linux based. One of the key elements of our applications is replication. Each user has a unique username. That username is used to track all of their actions on our websites, and as a tracking id for any e-commerce transactions at our partner sites. Our Apache webserver is configured to scrape the username from specified urls that we tell our users in advance that they can use for marketing purposes. For example, username = "smith" is instructed on our website that they can tell their friends and contacts to send them to www.imvite.com/smith

In this case, apache is configured to grab "smith" and track it in the global headers for the entire site as "spons_id=smith" therefore if they click on one of our partner sites such as dating, they would be send to dating.imvite.com/smith and if it's to a specific page on the same site or on another site, it would be appended to the url as www.imvite.com/anotherpage.php?spons_id=smith - this is all fairly commonly understood to website developers.

Another of the key elements of our applications is Authentication: When a user logs in to the website or the IM client, they need to be authenticated and tracked through their session.

Website: from any of the web pages, a user enters their username and password and is authenticated via an SQL call to our DB that validates that the entered info is accurate. They are then passed into a session cookie that allows access to login only pages. The session remains open until either the browser is closed, the user logs out (db session closed) or the sessions times out (5 minutes no activity). Since the DB and the webpages are on the same domain/server, this is a fairly straightforward process.

IM Client - the IM client is on the users computer, and they need access to our IM server and also to our DB server (each of the latter two are on separate servers). The process works like this: a user opens their IM client, they are prompted for username and password. They click enter, and the client sends a HTTP/POST request to our IM servers. The IM servers then send a HTML Post request to our Web/DB server with the username and password entered. The Webserver responds with Pass/Fail to the IM server, which based on the result, decides whether the IM session is opened. If the user receives a "Fail" they are not logged in to their IM. If the receive a "Pass" they are logged in with other relevant info about that user for tracking purposes - the info included in the authentication "Pass" tells the IM server what level the user is in the system (Member/ Associate) and therefore, which skin to open. It also tracks if they have access to certain features on the system, like audio/video. This is an open architecture, and we are not limited by what info can be passed between the servers to cater to our needs about tracking the user's session on the EVI. The IM also tracks what Public networks the user wishes to log in to (e.g. MSN, Yahoo, AOL/ICQ) and attempts to log them into those respective networks with their provided user/pwd info (this is separate from their IMVITE user info). Assuming their user info is correct, they are then connected to those public networks as well. The IM server maintains a "last good known password" in the event that connectivity is lost between the IM server and DB/Webserver (e.g if the user has successfully logged in to the IM at least once, their user and password info is also stored on the IM server as a backup for authentication if the DB server doesn't respond to the HTTP/Post request).

3. Front-End Web Applications: Our front-end applications are developed in HTML and PHP. The PHP talks to the My-SQL DB on our Linux servers.

All marketing emails address each user with their own unique urls, so that when they come back to the website or promote their website(s) to their customers, we are able to track accurately for commissions payouts. Emails from IMVITE, therefore require email scripts that connect to our member db and extract the username and insert it into the html code of the email. For example: Dear *FIRST_NAME*, Your dating website is http://dating.imvite.com/@USER_NAME

Our email script does an SQL row fetch and pulls out the data from the DB for each user's email, e.g. @USER_NAME = ROW['user']; the SQL query has all the users sorted for the list that is about to be emailed - the row fetch then merges the required variables from each user's record as the email program (on LINUX email Server) prepares the email to be submitted to the sendmail queue. According to the preferred IMVITE embodiment, a large number of Internet home-based entrepreneurs capture a share of Instant Message members/users utilizing the power of viral marketing and a variety of innovative marketing strategies. In addition, IMVITE Affiliate members will be able to share in the profits from all the revenues generated though our instant messaging E-commerce gateway. The preferred IMVITE Relationship management provides a multi-tiered compensation plan for affiliates to motivate them to expand the usage of the IMVITE IM platform and to promote a variety of products and services associated therewith.

Substantially, the e-commerce accelerator of the instant invention facilitates penetrating the market that is represented by members of the IM industry. Our penetration strategy includes a viral marketing program that heavily encourages and pays members/users to refer as many people as possible to download the IMVITE platform and use it as a gateway for their e- commerce. This will result in exponential user growth considering that the average IM user typically has between 20 and 39 people in their IM contact list.

About Instant Messaging: In our fast-paced world, sometimes even the rapid response of Email is not fast enough. You have no way of knowing if the person you are sending an Email to is online at that particular moment or not. Also, if you are sending multiple Emails back and forth with the same person, you normally have to click through a few steps to read, reply, and send the Email. This is why instant messaging (IM) has gained popularity.

Instant messaging allows you to maintain a list of people that you wish to interact with. You can send messages to any of the people in your list, often called a buddy list or contact list, as long as that person is online. Sending a message opens up a small window where you and your friend can type in messages that both of you can see.

Most of the popular instant-messaging programs provide a variety of features:

• Instant messages - Send notes back and forth with a friend who is online

• Chat - Create your own custom chat room with friends or co-workers

• Web links - Share links to your favorite Web sites • Images - Look at an image stored on your friend's computer

• Sounds - Play sounds for your friends

• Files - Share files by sending them directly to your friends

• Talk - Use the Internet instead of a phone to actually talk with friends

• Streaming content - Real-time or near-real-time stock quotes and news

The IMVITE community offers individuals an opportunity to become involved in our program at any of the following 3 membership levels: (this is a non-exhaustive list and is included for purposes of illustration)

1. Regular user - The user downloads the IMVITE platform and chooses to become a Basic Member. Basic members are entitled to use the IMVITE IM platform for free to invite their peers, chat with other members (and members of other IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and others) and to do their E-commerce through the IMVITE IM platform by accessing a variety of IMVITE E-commerce websites and the websites of other vendors thorough banners and other type of links.

Once the new Basic Member is in the system, our software program will link him/her with every new member that he/she personally invites to download the IMVITE IM platform. The system is now ready to track all the purchases of the Basic Member that he/she generates in any of the associated websites. Our system also tracks all the purchases of all the members/users that he/she has personally invited to download the IMVITE platform.

2. Affiliate Program - The user downloads the IMVITE platform and chooses to become an Affiliate Member (Affiliate). Affiliates are also entitled to use the IMVITE IM platform for free to invite their peers, chat with other members (and members of other IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and others) and to do their E-commerce through the IMVITE IM platform by accessing a variety of IMVITE E-commerce websites and the websites of other vendors thorough banners and other type of links. Very much like with the Basic Members, our system tracks the entire Affiliates' personally invited members and the entire E-commerce resulted from their purchases. The main difference between a Basic Member and an Affiliate Member is that the Affiliate has provided the Company with his personal and banking information to allow the Company to pay him commissions on all his/her personal purchases and those purchases of the Basic Members and Affiliates he/she personally invited to download the IMVITE IM platform. For example, if Affiliate A purchases a book from Amazon.com through the IMVITE gateway, he/she will receive a commission from IMVITE. At the same time, IMVITE will also reward the Affiliate who originally invited Affiliate A to download the IMVITE platform.

3. Business Opportunity - In order to increase the penetration pace of the IMVITE IM platform in the market place, IMVITE offers a powerful business opportunity to individuals interested in a home-based business. These entrepreneurs' ("Associates") responsibility is to aggressively promote and expand the usage of the IMVITE IM platform which in turn will result in massive E-commerce done through our gateway.

In order to achieve the desired penetration and results, IMVITE has created a powerful compensation pay plan to motivate its Associates to expand the usage of the IMVITE IM platform. This compensation pay plan is based on rewarding our Associates for the E- commerce done by all their personal invited members in addition to all the individuals who became members as a result of the efforts of the Associates.

Associates pay a one-time registration fee and a monthly fee to cover for the hosting of a variety of business tools available to them to recruit other Associates and members, to track their sales and the members in their groups, as well of other tools to develop the market.

Associates also receive:

1) Constant technical and marketing support.

2) Constant training.

3) Access to training conference calls.

4) Several additional profit centers to be developed by IMVITE. 5) Profit from advertising deals developed by IMVITE for their benefit.

6) Complete administration tools to run their business.

About rewards: Affiliates/Associates will earn rewards in direct proportion to the number of IMVITE IM platform members/users. The more eyeballs, the more income they will generate. The Company has developed many different profit centers for its Affiliates/Associates. So again, the only thing the Affiliate has to do is invite people to use the IMVITE IM platform. The Company does the rest. The following are some of the ways the Affiliate/Associates will earn rewards:

1) The Company will negotiate the publishing of advertising banners in the dialogue boxes, control boxes and pop up windows. The Company will continue to negotiate advertising opportunities for global brands companies, arrangements such as affiliate programs and other profitable venues.

2) In the event of affiliate programs, the Company will receive a percentage of the total number of sales of the advertised items. We will share this revenue with the Affiliate that had the buyer in his member/user base.

3) The Company has access to an almost unlimited source of products. This revenue will be shared with the Affiliates that had the buyers in their member/user base.

4) There are many other profit centers that have been conceived and will be introduced and rolled out to the user base at the appropriate time.

IMVITE has developed an innovative compensation plan whereby Affiliates/Associates are rewarded for expanding the use of our platform. Affiliates/Associates will be rewarded via a multi tiered compensation plan.

Affiliates/Associates and members/users may also be rewarded based on actions, suck as starting an IM chat with someone, having their IM remote open and logged in, and just by using our Email system every time they send an Email. Also for every word or letter they type into a chat box.

About recruiting Affiliates/Associates: IMVITE has incorporated an incentive program to leverage its advertising dollars by motivating its Affiliates/Associates to help recruit more Affiliates/Associates. The advertising power of hundreds and then thousands of Affiliates/Associates will create a total advertising effort equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The online business revolution offers the ultimate leverage tool for the average person to own and succeed in his home-based enterprise. This offers IMVITE a tremendous market for the acquisition of Affiliates (home-based entrepreneurs) and an almost unlimited supply of Members/users (to be targeted as consumers by our advertisers). Affiliate marketing is one of the cornerstones of E-commerce today. No one can deny the impact Affiliate marketing has had on E-commerce. The principal is very simple. Anyone with a website can opt to place banners from other companies on his/her site and earn commissions when visitors click on the banners and purchase from the advertisers websites. For advertisers it is as having a large team of sales people working for them 24 hours a day.

Amazon.com created affiliate marketing on the web and are currently perfecting it. They continue to reap the fantastic rewards of this innovative system. On the other hand, the affiliates do not enjoy and cannot aspire to similar rewards. One of the challenges of the system is that it is not for everyone. Most people do not have a website and therefore cannot participate. Others have a website but are limited to the number of advertising banners they can post as they do not want to crowd their website or distract their visitors with other peoples business.

Is there a solution? Is there a perfect system out there for every individual to participate and earn unlimited income in the hot industry of affiliate programs? What if there was a solution that was free to participate? What if you could affiliate yourself with over 1000 of the top internet companies in the world and profit from it? What if you didn't have to drive traffic to it? What if you did not need any training to succeed? What if IMVITE would pay you money to do your regular internet shopping from your favorite sites? What if you could earn a commission when all your friends and family shop at their favorite sites? What if in addition to that, you could also earn a commission on what their friends and family buy? What if it could all happen for you by simply IMVITING your friends, family, and others in the world to use the IMVITE Instant Message platform?

Prizes and Database Marketing: When members/users sign up with the IMVITE™ Network they will answer a series of questions clearly defining their demographic profiles and personal interests. Our prizes, such as DVD's, CD's, jewelry, sports memorabilia, tickets to events, cars, trips, etc. will then be delivered to the members/users based on their profiles. IMVITE™ will flood its members/users with prizes in a fun and creative way. This will maximize usage, exposure and growth through viral marketing. The longer members/users are logged-in to our network the higher their chances to win prizes. This creates a unique opportunity for advertisers to build brand awareness and to sell their products.

The fact that members/users can enjoy more benefits and features than what the big four IM networks offer them, as well as win prizes just by using our service, is one of the core reasons why members/users will sign up with us. IMVITE™ members/users will still be able to IM with all their peers that have not switch yet, as we offer IMteroperability with AOL™, ICQ™, MSN™ and Yahoo™. So our members/users will be able to connect with their buddies from other systems using our software.

Win- Win Network (prize=rewards):

1) The IMVITE™ Rewards Network will benefit from the multi-media marketing efforts of our Affiliates to attract members/users.

2) IMVITE™ Network Affiliates/Associates have a powerful opportunity to profit from the rising Instant Messaging and E-commerce trends.

3) Network Affiliates/Associates will constantly earn income simply by using IMVITE™ to communicate with their peers. They will also benefit from the many other features that the IMVITE™ Network offers. 4) Network members/users will constantly earn prizes by using the IMVITE IM platform.

5) Advertisers will be able to reach the consumers they want to target through our opt-in, unique Instant Messaging boxes and web sites banner programs.

IMVITE™ Business Center: The IMVITE™ Business Center is a unique E-commerce entity that will allow Affiliates to profit from a variety of business activities. The main activity of our Affiliates/Associates will be to acquire members/members/users. The Company takes care of the rest. IMVITE will sell them a variety of products and services offered through the IMVITE™ Network. Basically the Company will provide all other business functions for them; the Company will contract and manage all advertising, manage all profit centers, produce new sources of revenue, to name a few.

The IMVITE™ Business Center is a very attractive business proposition due to the fact that as soon as Affiliates/ Associates acquire their first user, they will start to receive a passive income without having to be involved with that user any more. The more members/users they acquire, the more income they will receive. In other words, they IMVITE their peers to download the free IMVITE™ software and they are already in business!

The IMVITE™ Business Center is in essence a sophisticated conglomerate of income revenue streams. The IMVITE™ Business Center offers our Affiliates/Associates to own and profit from a variety of e-businesses. The following are some examples of the profit centers:

Advertising Agency: The same way a successful advertising agency owns billboards all over the city and profits by renting them to advertisers, our Affiliates will "own" space on their Members/users Dialogue Boxes and Control Boxes and will profit from all banner advertising displayed on such space.

Affiliates/Associates will also profit from the advertising revenue from all opt-in emails that their Members/users will receive. Newspaper: Our Affiliates/Associates will be able to profit from every classified ad that their Members/users list on the IMVITE classifieds electronic paper.

Financial Institution: Affiliates/Associates and Members/users will be able to purchase products and services offered by the IMVITE™ Network utilizing IMVITE' s own secure on¬ line payment system. Affiliates/ Associates will receive profit from the usage of the payment system by their Members/users.

Home Shopping Network: Affiliates/Associates will profit from all purchases from the IMVITE Home Shopping Network made by their Members/users.

Auction Business: Affiliates/Associates will profit from revenues generated from the IMVITE on-line auction system.

Internet Portal: Affiliates/Associates will profit from all banner advertising published on their own replicated websites. They will also be able to profit from all searches done with the IMVITE™ search engine by their Members/users.

Dating Services: Dating services are projected to be among the most profitable on-line businesses. Affiliates/Associates will be able to profit from the revenue generated by the IMVITE dating website.

Other revenue streams include software to build websites, a Family communication package and VOIP packages, among others.

Business Development Tools: As mentioned above, the core activity of our Affiliates/Associates will be acquiring Members/users, as the Company will do almost everything else for them. The Company will provide all the tools and training necessary for our Affiliates/ Associates to succeed in acquiring large numbers of Members/users. The following are the main tools provided to the IMVITE™ Business Center:

The IMVITE™ IMdentity™ : IMVITE™ Affiliates/Associates will receive an Instant Messaging platform with the following features:

1. Regular use of Instant Messaging.

2. The Instant Message platform will have most if not all the bells and whistles in the industry.

3. A direct link to their Business Center website

4. A fly out window will show any item personally listed by the Affiliate on the IMVITE classifieds electronic newspaper that will be seen by everyone they IM with. (As explained in IMVITE Classifieds™ below)

5. A fly out window with the IMVITE Shopping Network™ that will be seen by everyone they IM with.

6. A search engine.

The IMVITE™ Associate Website: IMVITE™ Associates will receive an E-commerce website. Each Associate may be able to customize some areas, while the Company will control other areas. The following are some of the features of the Associates' website:

1. Members/users will be able to download the IMVITE™ Instant Message software.

2. Associates will be able to view in real time all the activities of their Members/users.

3. Associates will be able to convert Members/users into IMVITE™ Affiliates/Associates.

4. Associates will be able to track all the business of the IMVITE™ Affiliates/Associates they invite.

5. Associates and Members/users will be able to advertise their personal classified ads on IMVITE Classifieds.

6. Affiliates/Associates will be able to post pictures, business albums with pictures of their successful converted Affiliates/Associates, etc.

7. Associates can choose a template, personalize their Web page by uploading their own images, text, music, and even Flash movie files. They can also choose from several pre-designed options to use such as short movies, company-owned images, music, and professionally written text.

8. Affiliates/Associates will be able to register other Associates with the IMVITE electronic payment system (As explained below).

9. All Members will be able to order Company products. Affiliates/Associates will be notified of and receive commission for any orders made in their groups.

10. All Members will have a link to register with all IMVITE products and services.

The IMVITE™ Communication Center: IMVITE™ Associates will have access to the IMVITE™ Communication Center (ICC). The ICC system offers its Associates a revolutionary new way to stay informed. This technology allows Associates to use a single, toll-free number to receive calls, voice mail, email, and faxes. And because the ICC system is integrated with the Associates' Members/users information, Associates can run a query to find a specific group of people, Associates in their groups or customers and then send them group bulk voicemails, emails, or faxes. The ICC system is an enterprise-level back office solution. It is an international, multi-lingual software system that manages order entry, payments, commission processing, shipping, account management, genealogy tree management, system administration, and other functions. Using the ICC system will result in increased effectiveness for customer service reps and Associates, more streamlined operations, and more support for international growth, which means greater effectiveness for the whole Company.

Email and Calendar: As part of the IMVITE™ Business Center management system, the ICC system includes fully functional email and calendaring programs. Associates can access then- email and calendar from anywhere in the world via the Internet, helping them to stay informed and improve communication with their Members/users, customers converted affiliates and the Company itself. The calendar will serve Associates as an electronic day planner, allowing them to see their schedules from a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly view. The calendar also serves as a virtual message board for the Company, as we can post messages and events to their Affiliates' calendars. The company will also be able to alert Associates of important information through the email system. The feature that makes these tools so unique is their integration with all of the products in the IMVITE™ Business Center. Associates can run custom queries, sorting their Members/users and customers by multiple criteria. The queries can be saved and re-run in the future, and the results of the queries can be used as groups in the Associates' email and calendaring programs. This feature allows Associates to create very specialized groups of Members/users and customers and then target that specific group with an email or by posting an event to that group's calendar.

IMVITE™ Business Center Revenue: The key of the success of the IMVITE™ Network is to provide an exciting income opportunity for our Affiliates/ Associates. The following are some of the various income streams of the IMVITE™ Business Center:

1. A percentage of all the advertising revenue corresponding to banner ads displayed on their Members/users' and Affiliates' Dialogue Boxes and Control boxes.

2. A percentage of all opt-in email advertising revenue sent to their Members/users and Affiliates.

3. A percentage of all the advertising in the bottom part of each email sent to their Members/users and Affiliates.

4. A percentage of all the classified ads that their Members/users and their Affiliates run on the IMVITE Classifieds newspaper.

5. A percentage of all the sales to their Members/users and Affiliates through the IMVITE Shopping Network.

6. A percentage of the revenue generated every time a member/user or Affiliate uses the IMVITE™ search engine.

7. A percentage of the revenue from IMVITE dating website.

8. A percentage of any other future revenue generated from sales of products and services to their Members/users and Affiliates through the IMVITE Cyber mall.

9. A percentage of all the sales of the IMVITE website builder software.

10. A percentage of all sales generated through the Associates' group.

About business opportunity competitive advantage: The IMVITE™ Network is designed to function according the two following concepts: 1. Members/users will prefer to IM with a platform that offers features, excitement, fun and an opportunity to earn thousands of Dollars in cash and prizes every day, week and month of the year.

2. Millions of Internet members/users around the world are in search of an opportunity to make part time and full time income from the convenience of their homes.

Let's concentrate on item number 2 above, as item number one is obvious and self- explanatory. The business model created for our Affiliates/Associates is second to none. The business model offered by the IMVITE™ Network will attract the attention of hundreds of thousands of individuals looking for a secondary income or an opportunity for financial independence.

One of the most unique aspects of the IMVITE™ business model is that our affiliates/Associates do not have to sell a product or a service in order to generate a significant income. The core of their business is to IMVITE others to IM with our platform for free and earn cash and or prizes. We will do the rest for them. How difficult can that be? This is probably the simplest and easiest business proposition in the market today.

The simplicity of the IMVITE™ business model is the key of the duplication and exponential growth that is expected to occur. The Affiliates' financial success is based on their willingness to IMVITE others and not on their selling skills, buying power or organizational capabilities. This will be tremendously appealing to the millions of entrepreneurs around the globe who are seeking an opportunity in which they can succeed. This is a business model where anybody can succeed.

Another key to our model is that we are not selling people items that they don't want to buy. We're not teaching them to buy from Amazon.com, we're teaching them to buy through the IMVITE Global Gateway. We estimate that there is no other opportunity like this one in the market today. This model has eliminated most of the common elements that result in slow distributorship growth and high attrition rates. About: Corporate Revenue Sources: One of the primary challenges facing the IM market is monetization. How to generate revenue from the hundreds of millions of IM users. The four major players (AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo,) have been using advertising as their main revenue source and they are all focusing on enterprising solutions.

IMVITE has conceived a powerful enterprising solution to derive revenue from a variety of sources. The revenue sources can be divided into three different areas: 1. Advertising - Every company and organization is interested in having their customers, affiliates, associates and/or members in front of them as much as possible. They spent billions of advertising Dollars to keep their names, brands and products in front of their customers and patrons. Advertisers will be able to take advantage of the following advertising channels: Dialogue Box and Control Box Advertising - There is simply no better way to be in front of a customer than to appear in the Dialogue Box and in the Control Box of an Instant Messaging platform. Every time members/users log into the IMVITE™ Network, they will automatically be in front of the advertising of our Corporate sponsors.

Members/users will be in front of the name, logo, products, specials and news from the Corporate sponsors for many hours a month, sometimes a day. Each advertisement will be linkable and targeted to specific members/users based on their preferences.

Sponsoring Conversations - Advertisers will be able to sponsor each new conversation that each user starts. In the Dialogue Box, as soon as the User is logged in, it will display for example, "This conversation is sponsor by Amazon.com" IMVITE™ Email Account - Every user will be able to have a free Email account with IMVITE.net (joe@IMVITE.net) Members/users will be motivated to sign up and use their IMVITE™ Email because IMVITE will give them a percentage of the revenue generated. Revenue is generated by selling advertisement on the bottom of each Email.

Each time a user sends an Email, it will let the receiving party know if the sender is currently on line through IM. This way they can commence an IM conversation. IMVITE™ Homepage Advertising - Members/users will be checking our Homepage and website constantly to see what the daily top prizes among other important developments are. Similar to other portals, we will offer numerous services and content to maximize website traffic and stickiness. They will also be able to see Company news and feature stories. There will be a winners listing and a listing of the top-producing Affiliates/Associates. We will have advertising space for rent on every page of the website.

Affiliates Web Site Advertising - Advertisers will be able to place banners in our Associates' websites. There will be thousands of Associates' websites attracting the traffic of their Members/users and Affiliates.

2. Registration and Hosting Fees - AU Associates will pay a yearly registration fee and a monthly hosting fee for the hosting and management of their IMVITE™ Business Center. This includes their IMVITE™ Instant Messaging platform, their IMVITE™ website, their IMVITE™ Communication Center (Web based IMVITE.net email, calendar, etc.)

3. Peripheral Income Centers - The IMVITE™ Network has created a variety of income streams to capitalize on additional revenue and to make the business proposition even more attractive to our Affiliates and Associates. The following is a list of some of the peripheral income centers ( SOME OF these income centers will be rolled out over time):

IMVITE Shopping Network - Much like the "Home Shopping Network" IMVITE will be offering many great and unique items for sale on all dialogue boxes, once again for each target market. Unlike HSN that only has one channel at a time, we will have millions of eyeballs in different markets to sell products to each day. It will work much like the HSN and other such systems where on the bottom of all the boxes you will see a product with a number indicating the current available stock. That number will go down in real time as these items are sold. This will not only create a sense of urgency, but also a sense of comfort that they are buying the same thing that hundreds of others are purchasing as well. For example: Major League Baseball offers us 1000 autographed baseballs. We will know from our database that we have 100,000 baseball fans. Those fans, when they are logged in will see the special offer on their box.

IMVITE Classifieds - Every member/user will have the ability to advertise any item they want to sell or any service they provide. All IMVITE™ members/users will be able to see the items that are for sale by a specific user when they are IMing with him/her. All items will be listed on www.IMVITEclassifieds.com. Members/users will be able to see in their skin of their choice (Control boxes) all their buddies who have posted an Classified ad. A fee will be charged for every posting. IMVITE bidding - IMVITE bidding is the IMVITE™ Network's auction system. Very much like e-Bay, all members/users will be able to post items to be auctioned within the Network. A fee will be charged for posting and managing every auction IMVITE Electronic Payment (IEP) - IEP is the IMVITE™ Network's secured payment system. Very much like PayPal™, the IMVITE™ Network will provide a secured payment system that will allow all IMVITE™ members/users to purchase products from our Shopping Network™, our Classifieds™, our bidding™ and other websites.

Members/users will purchase products from the Network, make payments to their utility companies (gas, electricity, telephone, Internet, etc.) or transfer funds from one account to another (i.e. parents transferring money to their kids). Unlike any electronic payment system in the market, every dialogue box will have an icon from which members/users will be able to instantly transfer funds to merchants or peers. IEP will soon become an accepted payment system to be used outside the IMVITE™ network. IEP will keep a percentage of the transaction as a fee, very much as credit cards do.

IMVITE dating™ - IMVITE dating™ is the IMVITE™ Network's prime dating portal. Members/users will be able to download the IMVITE dating™ identity from the IMVITE' s website and communicate with other singles in the Network. Members/users will be able to post their pictures and information about themselves. All members/users will be able to browse through the pictures and simply click on the one they wish to communicate with. A fee will be charged. IMVITE poll™ - IMVITE poll™ is the IMVITE™ network's polling service. Members/users will be awarded entries to earn CASH OR prizes for answering polls from our corporate clients and agencies.

IMVITE dollars™ - IMVITE dollars™ will be the official internal currency of the IMVITE™ Network. Members/users will earn IMVITE dollars™ for participating in the various activities related to the Network. Members/users will be able to use the IMVITE dollars™ to purchase products and services from our Corporate Sponsors (advertisers). The IMVITE dollars™ is the powerful ingredient that closes the marketing circle. Now we are directly sending our community members to spend their money at our advertisers businesses. We will derive significant revenue by charging a percentage of the redeemed IMVITE dollars™. This plan will be rolled out once we achieve critical mass.

Search Engine - Each dialogue box will be equipped with our own search engine (private labeled). Revenue will be derived through charging advertisers on a click through basis in accordance with industry standards. The search engine will also be available on our home page.

IMVITE Identities — We have secured several domain names that will be used to build members/users' communities through our own websites and our own IMVITE identities. For example, IMVITEGolf.com will provide all golf enthusiasts in the Network with up to date information on golf related news, events, products, reviews and many other golf related issues. Members/users will be able to download the IMVITEGoIf identity from our website and from www.IMVITEGolf.com. This identity will give members/users the ability to chat, post questions, and attend forums with all other IMVITEGoIf identity members/users. Each website will be a source of revenue.

Other Features of the IMVITE IM Platform and IMVITE System:

1. Paying through the IM - People will be able to transfer money of any currency via their secure IMVITE IM Chat Box by the push of a button on the IM box. 2. Teens IM — On our teen website, teens that sign up will be rewarded with a point system for almost every action they do. For every IM then send, for every new user they have, etc. These reward points will then be used to purchase goods from an online store or from a special auction site that they can use the points to bid on items.

3. Search Engine with IM users online - A search engine service that only returns results of vendors' websites that are online and ready to chat (typing, voice, or video) and take care of business using the IMVITE platform. Companies will bid on how high they want their links to be listed. The higher the bid the higher ranked they'll be.

There will also be a rating system where people can rate how fast and how well the business responded to their IM request.

4. IMVITE Yellow Pages - An online Yellow pages that lists businesses giving priority to the ones that are online to chat (typing, voice, or video) and answer questions right away. Businesses that are on line to chat will be listed higher in the rank.

5. RSS feeds on the IM remote - Users will be able to have custom RSS feeds appear on their remote. Users will be able to view all the feeds they have chosen by simply clicking on a button.

6. Smicons or Smart Icons - Are icons that when clicked on, it automatically post information into the IM box. These Smicons can be text, pictures, files, or any other attachments. Even a little video feed.

7. Choose affiliate links for drop down menu on remote - Users will be able to add as many links to their favorite stores as they want in an easy drop down menu from the IM remote. IMVITE will provide a list of over 1000 companies that can be used and people can choose the ones they want quick access to.

8. Classified Ads and Auction system which lists when the lister is online to chat - When browsing classified ads from our classified ads site or when bidding on an auction from our auction site, those posters that are online will show up first. That way users can ask questions right away about an ad or an auction. When people are not online, users can drop a question by clicking on the "ask a question" button next to the ad.

9. To sell products in a count down version via the IM Remote (Home Shopping Network Style) - IMVITE will be offering products that will count down how much stock on the item is left in real time. This will be done in a similar fashion than Home Shopping Network does it in TV. When users click on the ad, it will open up to a product info page with a convenient way to place the order.

10. Specific Targeting - Based on the purchases made via our Instant Messaging Platform as well as from polls and surveys answered through the IM platform, we will know how to target which users with which ads down to the very specific. This information will be used to specifically target users according to their demographic profile.

11. Offering Non-Profit organizations and Businesses a way to earn money by offering them their own IMVITE identity. - An IMVITE identity is the custom look and feel of an organization that runs on our EVI platform. The Organization will have areas that they can customize like latest news and links, but when people download their skin and use their skin running on our IM platform, the company will earn commission.

12. Buyers Club products - Every member/user, Affiliate and Associate will be part of a huge global club with global purchasing power. We will secure special items and offer them to our community. When a certain number of individuals agree to buy a specific item, then everyone that buys it will get the item at the special price. We will do this often with new products coming out or even on special closeouts.

About Competition: EVIVITE™ is entering a market with some strong Competition. In 1999 companies such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Lycos, and Excite dominated Portal sites

About MLM/Affiliate Program: IMVITE has created the first MLM/affiliate program that delivers its products and services via an instant messaging platform. Most portals keep their revenue without sharing it with their members/users. With the IMVITE model, we are introducing a multilevel compensation plan where by Associates and Affiliates will earn a percentage of all revenues generated based on certain criteria.

About Rewards: Another tool for IMVITE™ Affiliates/Associates will be the prize/reward factor. We will flood members/users with rewards and we'll provide a level of excitement never seen yet in the IM industry.

About technical information for a MLM DB company (see figures 8-9):

• Members/users are tracked in a DB that maintains their level in the hierarchy of the company.

• DB tracks commissions to be paid to members/users based on their level in the hierarchy and compensation plan rules.

• DB provides online real time reporting to members/users to view their location in the hierarchy, including genealogy of members/users directly related to them (either the user who referred to them, and/all the members/users that joined from his referral)

• The software provides each user with the ability to replicate the website with a specific referral tracking mechanism so that members/users that enter the website via that user's specific 'replicated' page will be attributed to the referring user.

How does a user enter the IM tool (see figure 10)?

• Member/User enters IMVITE website

• Downloads IM tool

• Creates new unique user name and password

• Installs IM tool to local hard drive

• Runs the IM tool application

• Is prompted at each entry to IM tool for login and password info

• Is authenticated against realtime DB and is entered to IM control tool

• If DB is down or unable to perform real time authentication, there is an auxiliary DB that tracks user's password at the last known successful entry. Websites (see figures 11-12):

1. recruiting/marketing oriented: A. provides abundant marketing material to promote the IMVITE platform and to encourage new memberships. B. Explains the commission compensation plan and terms and conditions of joining as members. C. provides reporting gateway for members to their commissions and sales, sales organization and hierarchy, D. administrative functions for IMVITE personnel to make add, revise, and edit marketing content and member info. E. IM tool available for download to members. F. marketing and product sales info to members emphasizing how members can achieve best results.

2. user/download site: this site focuses on providing downloads of IM tool for users, and gateways to products to be sold.

3. product sites: Each imvite product resides in a separate domain and is available as "replicated site" (see section below "replication" for more info) for members to track sales, and for users to make purchases within the IMVITE network.

MLM Technical enabling notes

1. Need: How to track users coming into website in the MLM pyramid and assure that any e- commerce transactions done from clicks on website were accurately recorded. Problem: the incoming URL needs to include a unique username at the end of the address. What about filenames appended to URL? How to track usernames in that case?

How to accomplish this? Apache takes the incoming URL and looks first for anything after http ://www.imvite.com (or any of our other server ip's) e.g if the incoming URL is http://www.imvite.com/monevmaker then apache sets the session spons_id = moneymaker. There is a .ht access file in each directory that the webserver points to that tells it how to look for the spons_id from the URL. Each page on the server that has any possibility of e- commerce transaction or ability for login has PHP code "includes" in the header of those files that deal with authentication and configuration, and dbh access.

e.g. <?

/* program: XXXX. php last developer: XXXXX version 1.0 date: July 2005

*/ require 'config.php' ; include $includes_dir . 'sponsor.php' ;

//echo 'spons=' ^-SESSION[¹SPONS¹] ;

// if user submits form, validate input.

// if valid, redirect

// if invalid, show error message

/* this is code used for login which shows in 'u¹ the url to which user was trying to go when he got redirected to login if (isset($_GET['u'])) {

$u=$_GET['u'];

} elseif (isset ($_POST [ 'u' ] ) ) {

$u=$_POST[¹U¹];

}

*/ include $includes_dir . 'Authenticate.php'; include $includes_dir . 'rank_types.php' ;

$error = 0; //error flag $error_msg = ' ' ;

If the username is not recognized by the database (ie. Misspelled url, or username that doesn't exist) then the spons_id is set to IMVITE corporate account (which is #1 on the DB Tree - top of the pyramid)

If the user is going to a specific page, e.g. not the default index.php page on the directory, then we add the spons_id as an argument to the URL; ie. http: //www, imvite . com/register .php? spons id=moneymaker the Database recognizes the sponsor from either of these syntaxes, and the code to produce this is basic PHP.

2. How to permit thousands of users concurrently retrieving data and reports on their "genealogy" in the pyramid from online reports - without A. Crashing the system, B. Making users wait a long time for each report.

Industry Standard: We researched how other MLM companies and MLM service providers were doing this, and they had mostly gone with recursive db calls. The problem with this approach is that it's not scalable, ie. a db with 500,000 users may have over 200 levels in the pyramid, and by simply using SQL recursive queries, the online report is virtually impossible, unless the user is required to wait 15 minutes or more, or to have the report sent via email when the report is done.

Our approach: We decided it would be more beneficial to approach the user pyramid and e- commerce relationships in hierarchical trees instead of flat file relationships. The end result is instantaneous reporting, limited only by the speed of the web connection. The relationships are all built as the user enters the tree (e.g. at registration) and the rest of the tree is updated in real time as a new user signs up. We tested this in theory and then in live data simulation tests for over 1 million users, and the results were always within 1 second response from the server, with data beginning to be displayed immediately at the client's PC, and building in a vertical scroll as the data arrived from the web connection.

The tree is explained in greater detail in an attached diagram - the concept is that each username is unique in the database, and each username has 4 unique coordinates

1. Left value in tree

2. Right value in tree

3. Level value in tree

4. tree number

The left and right values are coordinates that specify where the user sits in the tree - e.g. who are the "parent" sponsors, and "children" sponsored by this user. Any Left value that falls between any L₅R coordinates of any other user, means that they are that user's sponsor. The level value tells how many levels away from the corporate top of the pyramid the user sits. This means that if a username has a level = 6, then any sponsors above him can be ordered by level ascending to see how they sit above him in the pyramid.

The tree number is useful for scalability for marketing promotions - should we decide to create new trees that report to a separate entity - so that the trees can grow independently.

Each time a new user registers, the spons_id variable is taken from the global variables filled by apache at entry to website (or via stored cookie from previous sessions). The db inserts this new user registration in the tree by looking at the L, R, and Level values of the sponsor, and according to the rules of the tree, the user is assigned a unique coordinate. Any of the users above it in the tree may have their right value modified (as defined in the tree rules), and all this happens in real time.

3. Database setup/connection: All of the DB calls and connectivity occurs via pre-defined functions on the webserver. There are no direct data calls. We essentially have almost all of the logic in the software between front and back end - with little or no logic in the db tables themselves.

DB Schema: There are 4 main tables needed:

1. Distributor - Table 1 contains static info on the user from registration - dist id is a unique primary_id

2. Tree - Table 2 contains their coordinates of the user in the tree

3. Rank - Table 3 contains rank codes info per the marketing scheme for promotions, etc...

4. History - Table 4 contains history transactions — users registered dates and change in rank, etc...

About Messenger /Webserver connectivity:

The authentication script when users signs at IM client, sends username and password via https (encrypted) post to the IM server. The IM server sends the same request to the web server for authentication. The IM server responds back to the IM server with pass/fail on the user-password, and if it's pass, it sends realtime data about that user to be plugged in to the IM session. For example: User's rank level at IMVITE (free, paying, senior, etc..) and what default skin to open - the skins have some features that are not permitted to free users. It also passes back their username in the DB, which is equivalent to the spons_id. This value is plugged in to any clicks from the IM to e-commerce, and the variable USERNAME is replaced with the value from the authentication response. E.g. user clicks on a link to open a dating service, the IM server looks at the click and translates from server tables to "dating.imvite.com/USERNAME" and then replaces USERNAME with the spons_id from that session. All of the clicks on the IM client point back to the IM server for validation so that nothing is

"hardcoded" into the IM. This offers us flexibility in changing urls and banners on the server without requiring the user to download a new IM client version.

The spons_id is echoed to the webserver via PHP with something like this:

<? echo $_SESSION["SPONS"];?>

So the html code that would point to dating would look like this:

<a href="http://dating.imvite.com/<? echo $_SESSION["SPONS"];?>"><IMVITE

DATING</a>

While the invention has been described with respect to specific examples including presently preferred modes of carrying out the invention, those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are numerous variations and permutations of the above described systems and techniques that fall within the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.

Claims

LWe Claim:

1. An Electronic Commerce Accelerator comprising a electronic telecommunications protocol between an e-commerce engine and an instant messenger coordinator; and the protocol includes, for a transaction between a user and the e-commerce engine, the instant messenger coordinator performing the steps of (A) authenticating the user's ID, (B) accessing a substantially current profile of the user's commercial relationships with other users, (C) establishing entry for the user to the e-commerce engine, and (D) in case of a predetermined behavior action or of a financial transaction between the user and the e-commerce engine, preserving a record of commercial benefits accruing to the user or to the other users according to said commercial relationships.

2. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator manages a plurality of users and each of said users has a substantially private contact list for establishing communications with users represented by said contact list, and the contact list substantially records communication establishing details of friends or associates of the user who are in frequent communications with the user.

3. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator interfaces to an instant messenger module of the user and the module is for transferring content selected from the list: alphanumeric transcriptions, SMS, VOEP, multimedia, and internet compatible user generated data-communications.

4. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator is a secure module resident at a data-communications topology enabled apparatus of the user.

5. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator is a secure server that is interconnected to a data-communications topology of the user and to a data communications topology of the e-commerce engine.

6. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator is a secure module of the e-commerce engine.

7. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator further processes applications for new users, and therewith provides for unique ID, and respective password or authentication mechanism.

8. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 7 wherein the instant messenger coordinator further records commercial relationship terms either (A) between at least one of the new users and the user or (B) between at least one of the new users and at least one of the other users.

9. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 8 wherein the instant messenger coordinator records the relationship terms in a database tree.

10. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 8 wherein the instant messenger coordinator records the relationship terms as a grade of membership.

11. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 10 wherein the grade of membership corresponds to predetermined commercial benefits that the user receives as a result of transactions with the e-commerce engine by the at least one new user.

12. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 11 wherein the instant messenger coordinator compresses out users of grades lower than a predetermined grade when calculating other predetermined benefits for the user.

13. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator is at least one server interfaced to a data communications topology selected from the list: an internet, a VOIP system, a Chat Room, SMS of a wireless network, and at least one packet in a mesh telephony system.

14. The Electronic Commerce Accelerator according to claim 1 wherein the instant messenger coordinator is at least one secure module interfaced to a data communications topology selected from the list: an internet, a VOIP system, a Chat Room, SMS of a wireless network, and at least one packet in a mesh telephony system.

15. An Electronic Commerce Accelerator comprising (A) an e-commerce system substantially residing on a computer based data-communications topology; (B) interfaced to the topology, an intermediary message network relations management tracker, and the tracker includes at least one server or secure module for coordinating at least one user group wherein each user has an instant messaging capability with predetermined other users and the capability includes a protocol for forming mutual instant messaging agreements between sets of at least two users in the group, means for maintaining the agreements, and means for instant messaging there-between; and (C) apparatus of a customer base of the e-commerce system substantially interfaced to the e-commerce system via an intermediary.

16. A marketing telecommunications system for relations management, by an Electronic Commerce Accelerator substantially as hereinbefore described and illustrated, and the system is comprising: a message network side and an e-commerce side; and the message network side includes a server or secure module coordinated user group wherein each user has an instant messaging capability with predetermined other users and the capability includes a protocol for forming mutual instant messaging agreements between sets of at least two users in the group, means for maintaining the agreements, and means for instant messaging there¬ between; and the e-commerce side is securely interfaced with the messaging side via a data communications network, wherein the e-commerce side includes secure mercantile means for transacting the transfer of goods or the provision of services.

17. An article of manufacture including a computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for accelerating e-commerce, the computer readable program code in said article of manufacture including: (A) first computer readable program code for causing a computer to first interface with a member of an instant messaging cluster; (B) directly or indirectly tied to the first computer readable software, second computer readable program code for causing the computer to establish and maintain relations management between an account for the member and an account for at least one other member; and (C) directly or indirectly tied to the second computer readable software, third computer readable program code for causing the computer to second interface with an e-commerce engine, thereby substantially facilitating transactions between the member and the engine.

18. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for accelerating e-commerce, said method steps including: (A) providing an intermediary server or secure module between a member of an instant messaging cluster and an e-commerce engine; (B) establishing and maintaining means for relations management between the member and other members; (C) facilitating means for secure mercantile transactions between the member and the e- commerce engine; and accruing predetermined benefits to the member or to at least one of the other members according to at least one clause of a commercial agreement peculiar to a transaction thereby facilitated between the member and the e-commerce engine.