Patent ID: 8738715

Claim:
A method for processing messages sent from a client in a network, the method comprising: for a message for a conversation to be transmitted from a client associated with a first user account of a plurality of user accounts associated with the network to a set of user accounts of the plurality of user accounts, upon activation of a command to send the message, sending to the set of user accounts a request message requesting acceptance of the conversation; receiving replies from the set of user accounts to the request message; sending the message for the conversation to a first subset of accounts associated with the set of user accounts that generated an acceptance message for the request message and updating a message log associated with the conversation to indicate that the first subset of accounts has accepted the conversation as participants in the conversation; associating a message thread with the message for the conversation and the participants, where responses to the message from the participants are included in the message thread; closing the message thread when one of the participants indicates that it is no longer participating in the message thread; and creating a new message thread for a set of remaining participants in the conversation.