Patent ID: 8537987

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a call from a calling party directed to a called party and storing a message from said call in a voicemail system to which said called party is a subscriber and in which a plurality of messages for said called party from previous calling parties was previously stored; providing said called party access to said voicemail system; providing said called party with information about, or identities of, said calling party and said previous calling parties; said called party, based on said information or said identities, selecting any one of said calling party and said previous calling parties to obtain a selected reply message recipient; said called party composing a broadcast message addressed to said selected reply message recipient and to at least a subset of said previous calling parties, said selected reply message recipient and said at least said subset together comprising broadcast parties; sending said broadcast message to said broadcast parties selected from the group of broadcast parties consisting of a calling party who is a subscriber to said voicemail system, a calling party who is not a subscriber to said voicemail system, a non-calling party who is a subscriber to said voicemail system and a non-calling party who is not a subscriber to said voicemail system; and merging a first message stored in said voicemail system with a second message stored in said voicemail system during said composing said broadcast message.