SWIM: Small World Instant Messaging

The researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with their own "Small World Instant Messaging" system. The system works as follows:

To search for information, a user sends a question to his own referral agent, which broadcasts the query to all of the user’s buddies’ agents. A referral agent in the buddy’s messenger searches its information identity profile to see if that person is likely to be able to answer the question; if not it can forward the query to its buddies.

When a likely match is found, that person sees the question and the path the query traveled, and can start chatting with the questioner immediately or make plans to discuss it later.

Source: Social Software Weblog, "Take a SWIM : Small-World Instant Messaging system"