affinity for the particular category affinity publication policy 106 includes rules and other information that govern the publication of affinities in one embodiment publication policy 106 can only be created and modified by an affinity administrator 103 in other embodiments affinity administrator 103 as well as other users can create and or modify the affinity publication policy affinity publication policy 106 preferably includes some or all of the following information an affinity threshold value an indication as to whether publisher module 102 must get permission from a user prior to publishing the user 39 s affinities an auto response grace period a setting for an auto publish flag and other information other information and other rules can be included in publication policy 106 the ability of administrator 103 to create an affinity publication policy creates a unique advantage because this features allows system 100 to be flexible and thus easily adapt to different cultures and laws regarding publication of private information if based on affinity publication policy 106 module 102 determines that it should publish user 101 39 s apparent affinity for the particular category then in one embodiment module 102 updates one or both of the user profile 110 associated with user 101 e g user profile 110 b and the category profile 166 associated with the particular category so that the update profile indicates that user 101 has an affinity for the particular category the user profile 110 and or category profile 166 is are also updated to indicate the affinity value assigned to the affinity profiles 110 and 166 may be searched by third parties or search engines in this way after affinity publisher module 102 publishes user 101 39 s affinity for the particular subject matter a third person.