Patent ID: 7752270

Claim:
A method of using an electronic communications network, in which a sender sends a message to a recipient, the network including a server for facilitating communications between the sender and the recipient, the method comprising the steps of: linking a sound file to an emoticon contained in a sender-generated message by creating a pointer to the sound file and attaching the pointer to the sender-generated message; determining by the server if the recipient already has the sound file by querying the recipient and evaluating whether or not the recipient has the sound file, and if not sending the sound file to the recipient; forwarding the sender-generated message, the emoticon, and the pointer to the sound file to the recipient, the pointer to the sound file associated with the emoticon; and at the recipient, displaying the sender-generated message and the emoticon, and audibly playing the sound file linked to the emoticon, wherein the linking occurs at the server according to a user preferences stored on the server where the user preferences indicates that the sound file is chosen to be linked with the emoticon by the sender and is periodically updated by the sender, the updating occurring by obtaining different sound files from the server and replacing one or more of a set of default sound files, linked with one or more emoticons, stored in the user preferences.