Patent ID: 7558828

Claim:
A method of web logging using an instant message (IM) system, the method comprising: identifying, to an IM host system, an interactive software agent that has a screen name and is configured to receive and respond to IMs from users of the IM host system; maintaining, in a computer memory storage device, data that records associations between individual web logs within a collection of multiple web logs and corresponding user identifiers that are associated with the individual web logs; receiving, at the interactive software agent, an IM from an IM sender that is addressed to the screen name for the interactive software agent and that includes content that is to be added to a web log associated with the IM sender; in response to receiving the IM from the IM sender that is addressed to the screen name for the interactive software agent: determining that the IM includes content that is to be added to a web log; identifying, from among the users of the IM host system and based on the IM, the IM sender as the IM user who sent the IM; based on having identified the IM sender as the IM user who sent the IM: accessing the data that records the associations between the individual web logs and the corresponding user identifiers that are associated with the individual web logs; comparing a user identifier corresponding to the IM sender to at least some of the user identifiers within the accessed data, and based on results of comparing the user identifier corresponding to the IM sender to the user identifiers within the accessed data, identifying, from among the collection of web logs, a web log as being associated with the IM sender; based on having determined that the IM includes content that is to be added to a web log and as a consequence of having identified the web log as being associated with the IM sender, determining that the web log identified as being associated with the IM sender is the web log, from among the collection of web logs, to which the content included in the IM is to be added; and based on having determined that the identified web log is the web log to which the content included in the IM is to be added, adding the content included in the IM to the web log identified as being associated with the IM sender.