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. 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 global gallery availability parameter, and each message has a gallery participation timer. The gallery is made unavailable for viewing upon expiry of the gallery availability parameter or upon expiry of the gallery participation timer of a last posted message in the gallery, whichever occurs first.
