Patent attributes
A server maintains a gallery of ephemeral messages respectively comprising visual media content, such as user-provided photographic content or user-provided video content. Each ephemeral message is posted to the gallery by a user for viewing by recipients via recipient devices. At least some of ephemeral messages are augmented by the user with user-provided drawing content and/or text content. In response to a gallery view request from any of the recipient devices, the ephemeral messages in the gallery are displayed on the requesting device in automated sequence, each message being displayed for a respective display duration before display of the next message in the gallery. The gallery has a gallery availability parameter, such as a gallery timer, with the gallery being made unavailable for viewing upon expiry of the gallery availability parameter.