Patent ID: 7458030

Claim:
A computer-implemented messaging system, comprising: a messaging client for presenting a dialog interface to a plurality of users; a media viewer, communicating with the messaging client, the media viewer selectively presenting a set of shared media objects selected by at least one user with control of an image-sharing session to at least one user without control of the image-sharing session, wherein the media viewer is configured to assign two or more control objects to two or more users of the plurality of users, wherein each of the two or more control objects is at least one of a certificate, cookie, or token and is transmissible to another user of the plurality of users such that, upon receipt of one of the two or more objects, a receiving user is permitted to: (1) control the display of each of the media objects in the set of shared media objects, and (2) manipulate remote interface elements on one or more media viewers presented to one or more users without one of the two or more control objects; a presentation engine component in the media viewer for presenting all of the media objects within the set of shared media objects to the at least one user without control by parallel execution of independent image-processing operations to: (1) convert at least one media object into a thumbnail-sized representation of the at least one media object for viewing by the at least one user without control, (2) transfer all of the media objects within the set of shared media objects and the thumbnail-sized representation to the at least one user without control, and (3) load all of the media objects within the set of shared media objects and the thumbnail-sized representation to be viewed by the at least one user without control.