Patent ID: 8464166

Claim:
A method of managing a user's friends in a virtual environment presented to the user via a user computer, the method comprising: on a server computer, representing a toy in the real world as a virtual character in the virtual environment; accepting commands from the user to control the virtual character; establishing a user account for the user in said virtual environment and saving the virtual character with the user account; registering a plurality of additional virtual characters in the virtual environment to additional users, wherein additional toys in the real world are represented by the additional virtual characters in the virtual environment and the additional users control the additional virtual characters in the virtual environment; using the server computer for interacting the virtual character with the plurality of additional virtual characters in response to commands accepted from the user; transmitting content for displaying, with the user computer, an interface populated with an identifier indicative of each of the plurality of additional users controlling one of the additional virtual characters present in a communal portion of the virtual world also occupied by the virtual character, and said plurality of additional users are not already registered as friends of the user in the virtual environment, where said identifier is selectable by the user to allow the user to extend an invitation to any of the plurality of additional users to become the user's friend, said invitation to be sent to at least one of the additional users selected using the interface that controls one of the additional virtual characters in the communal portion of the virtual world also occupied by the virtual character controlled by the user, and where the plurality of additional users are users who can control additional virtual characters and are not currently a friend of the user; designating a subset of a combination of the additional users and the additional virtual characters that have received and accepted an invitation to become a friend from the user as friends of the user in the virtual environment and adding the friends to a list of friends associated with the user account; sending information which causes the user account to be displayed to the user via the user computer; and ranking the friends on the list displayed to the user in an order based at least in part on participation of the virtual character controlled by the user and one or more of the plurality of additional virtual characters controlled by the friends on the list in a common activity within a portion of the virtual environment occupied by both the virtual character and the one or more of the plurality of additional virtual characters, wherein the participation in the common activity affecting the order of the friends comprises involvement of the virtual character controlled by the user and the one or more of the plurality of additional virtual characters in a game in the portion of the virtual environment.