Patent ID: 8122088

Claim:
An instant messaging (IM) application stored on a non-transitory machine readable storage medium comprising: a capability to create personal notes during an instant messaging (IM) communication session that is a real-time interactive text based communications, wherein said personal notes contain user entered text that is not transmitted as part of an instant messaging dialog to a remote communication participant of the instant messaging session; and an instant messaging (IM) graphical user interface of the instant messaging application comprising: a common input region for entering text that is conveyed to participants during the instant messaging (IM) session and for entering personal notes that are not conveyed to the participants over a network during the instant messaging session, wherein personal notes are distinguished by the instant messaging (IM) application as each personal note is preceded by a reserved set of textual characters that indicate that subsequent content is a personal note and not text that is to be conveyed to the participants over the network: and an output region for viewing the instant messaging dialog exchanged during the instant messaging session, wherein said personal notes entered by a user able to view the personal notes that is also the user that entered the personal notes are also presented within the output region.