Aggregating media collections between participants of a sharing network utilizing bridging

A physical user device comprising:

• a) a communication interface comprising at least one hardware component communicatively coupling the physical user device to a network;
• and
• b) a control system, associated with the communication interface, adapted to:
• i) discover a plurality of shared media collections made available to a first user of the physical user device by a plurality of second users of a plurality of second user devices, wherein media items in the plurality of shared media collections comprise at least one media item from a local media collection of a user having a direct relationship with the first user in a social network and at least one media item from a local media collection of a user having an indirect relationship with the first user in the social network;
• ii) aggregate one or more shared media collections from the plurality of shared media collections and the local media collection of the first user to provide an aggregate media collection for the first user at the physical user device;
• iii) enable the first user to utilize the aggregate media collection at the physical user device;
• iv) score media items in the aggregate media collection based on user preferences of the first user to provide a desirability score for each of the media items:
• and
• v) filter the aggregate media collection based on a threshold score and the desirability scores for the media items in the aggregate media collection to provide a filtered version of the aggregate media collection.

A non-transitory computer readable medium storing software adapted to instruct a control system of a user device to:

• discover a plurality of shared media collections made available to a first user of the user device by a plurality of second users of a plurality of second user devices, wherein media items in the plurality of shared media collections comprise at least one media item from a local media collection of a user having a direct relationship with the first user in a social network and at least one media item from a local media collection of a user having an indirect relationship with the first user in the social network;
• aggregate one or more shared media collections from the plurality of shared media collections and the local media collection of the first user to provide an aggregate media collection for the first user at the user device;
• enable the first user to utilize the aggregate media collection at the user device;
• score media items in the aggregate media collection based on user preferences of the first user to provide a desirability score for each of the media items;
• and
• filter the aggregate media collection based on a threshold score and the desirability scores for the media items in the aggregate media collection to provide a filtered version of the aggregate media collection.