Patent ID: 8176421

Claim:
A method for monitoring a virtual universe resident avatar through an associated supervisory avatar, comprising: monitoring an engagement of the a user avatar with a virtual universe for an event occurrence, the user avatar representing an agent account of a user within the virtual universe; associating a symbiont with the user avatar as a function of detecting the event occurrence through the monitoring; selecting a symbiont type from a plurality of symbiont types as a function of a user avatar characteristic and an objective of a virtual universe provider, each of the plurality of symbiont types comprising divergent agendas selected from a plurality of agendas comprising a first agenda beneficial to an interest of the user avatar, and a second agenda that is in contravention to an interest of the user avatar and beneficial to an interest of a third party or the virtual universe provider; populating the symbiont with the selected symbiont type; the populated symbiont appearing to the user as a supervising avatar associated with the user avatar and having a distinctive visual character appearance informative to the user of the agenda of the supervising avatar as the first or the second agenda; the populated symbiont processing the event occurrence and determining an action as a function of the first or second agenda of the selected symbiont type; and the populated symbiont taking the determined action.