An interesting development from researchers at the University of Michigan:
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.
The researchers call it Small-World Instant Messaging or SWIM.
