I do like the IRC reference from carmogy. I do believe however that the BBS is quite directly related here. For me this patent just sounds like a message board with presence awareness.

From Wikipedia MajorBBS article:

MBBS software was known for fostering online communities and an interactive online experience where users were able to interact with each other via Teleconference (chat rooms) and multiplayer games. This flexibility spawned a small industry of Independent Software Vendors (ISV) who began developing MBBS add-ons, which ranged from shopping malls (what would now be called shopping cart software) to online role playing games.

Prior art is not as old as IRC, but MajorBBS is from 1986, so still quite old enough.

I do like the IRC reference from carmogy. I do believe however that the BBS is quite directly related here. For me this patent just sounds like a message board with presence awareness.

From Wikipedia MajorBBS article:

MBBS software was known for fostering online communities and an interactive online experience where users were able to interact with each other via Teleconference (chat rooms) and multiplayer games. This flexibility spawned a small industry of Independent Software Vendors (ISV) who began developing MBBS add-ons, which ranged from shopping malls (what would now be called shopping cart software) to online role playing games.

Prior art is not as old as IRC, but MajorBBS is from 1986, so still quite old enough.

EDIT: just realized IRC didn't come until 1988, so this is even prior to that.