Estimating merchandise uniqueness

Abstract

Estimating a degree of uniqueness of a set of merchandise based on merchandise owned by others in a social network. An analysis is performed on a social network of a user and a degree of uniqueness for a set of merchandise is determined.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method comprising:
 performing a natural language processing on a description of a first set of articles of merchandise;   identifying a set of characteristics of the first set of articles of merchandise based, at least in part, on the natural language processing;   identifying a set of metadata of the first set of articles of merchandise;   accessing a set of social media accounts for a user;   determining a social circle of the user based, at least in part, on the set of social media accounts;   determining a set of social media contacts in the social circle, wherein:
 the set of social media contacts are attending an event, and the user is attending the event; 
   identifying a set of social media posts for the set of social media contacts;   identifying a second set of articles of merchandise within the set of social media posts;   identifying a set of characteristics of the second set of articles of merchandise;   generating a comparison of the set of metadata of the first set of articles of merchandise to a set of metadata of the second set of articles of merchandise;   generating a comparison of the set of characteristics of the first set of articles of merchandise and the set of characteristics of the second set of articles of merchandise based, at least in part, on the comparison of the set of metadata of the first set of articles of merchandise to a set of metadata of the second set of articles of merchandise;   generating a uniqueness factor for the first set of articles of merchandise based, at least in part, on the comparison of the set of characteristics of the first set of articles of merchandise and the set of characteristics of the second set of articles of merchandise, wherein:
 the uniqueness factor is a percentage; and 
 the uniqueness factor identifies the first set of articles of merchandise as unique with regard to the social circle; and 
   generating a recommendation of a third set of articles of merchandise based, at least in part, on the uniqueness factor, wherein:
 the third set of articles of merchandise is equivalent to the first set of articles of merchandise; and the third set of articles of merchandise includes at least a first article of merchandise in the first set of articles of merchandise; 
   wherein: at least accessing the set of social media accounts is performed by computer software running on computer hardware.