Virtual social clubs: meeting places for the Internet community

This paper describes a system designed to support a range of 'virtual clubs', video-enabled meeting places on the Internet emulating a real-world club where friends, acquaintances and business colleagues meet in a social context. The distinguishing feature of virtual clubs is support for multiple, simultaneous group interaction, where users can move dynamically from one group to another, and participate in a range of activities. An architecture supporting application development has been implemented, incorporating session management software and multipoint layered video. Features of the system include dynamic session management, flexible policy support, and novel user interfaces. Several virtual club applications are under development.