US Patent 7177928 Status setting system and method

A status setting method that includes, setting and notifying a status that is suitable to a channel, preparing a status table for storing a settable status for each channel, and obtaining the status table of the channel. The user status in each channel is selected from among statuses registered in the status table of the channel and then set. Users can set a suitable status for each channel because the status table is set according to properties of each channel and user statuses can be separately set for each channel. It is preferable that a particular user such as an administrator set a status table. A settable status in a channel can be changed according to a user attribute in the channel.