Patent ID: 8407751

Claim:
A method of providing instant messaging in conjunction with a program, the method comprising: providing the program to a requesting user to consume the program; receiving a request from the requesting user to exchange messages with other users who consume the program; associating a user identifier corresponding to the requesting user with a program identifier that uniquely identifies the program being provided to the user in order to generate a program record; transmitting the program record to an electronic database; acquiring, by an instant messaging server, a list of the other users who consume the program in addition to the requesting user; based on the instant messaging server acquiring the list of the other users to be sent to a media device of the requesting user, performing a first test to ascertain whether any in the list of the other users has a first block parameter indicating not to engage in instant messaging at all; based on the instant messaging server ascertaining that none in the list of the other users has the first block parameter not to engage in the instant messaging at all, performing, by the instant messaging server, a second test to ascertain whether any in the list of the other users has a second block parameter indicating not to engage in instant messaging with the requesting user; based on the instant messaging server performing the first test and the second test, removing any in the list of the other users who has the first block parameter and the second block parameter before transmitting the list of the other users to the media device of the requesting user; transmitting, by the instant messaging server, the list of the other users to the media device of the requesting user in accordance with the first test and the second test in which any in the list of the other users having the first block parameter and the second block parameter were removed by the instant messaging server prior to the list of the other users being transmitted to the requesting user; and filtering the list of the other users by demographically based criteria; wherein filtering the list of the other users by demographically based criteria includes filtering by age, gender, and geographic location.