Avatars in social interactive television

A computer program product stored on one or more computer readable media for simultaneously presenting avatars and a multimedia program, the computer program product having instructions operable for:

• during a viewing session, receiving animation input data harvested by monitoring a viewer;
• displaying an avatar corresponding to the viewer in a virtual environment that includes further avatars corresponding to further viewers;
• and
• during the animation session, continually updating the avatar in response to the animation input data.

A service for presenting a virtual environment containing a plurality of avatars with the presentation of a multimedia program, the service comprising:

• receiving from a plurality of viewers a plurality of requests to be presented with instances of a virtual environment that includes a plurality of avatars that correspond to the plurality of viewers;
• translating animation data generated from individual viewers of the plurality of viewers into a plurality of synthetic avatar actions taken by corresponding avatars of the plurality of avatars, wherein the synthetic avatar actions are intended to mimic actions by corresponding viewers of the plurality of viewers;
• and
• presenting the virtual environment for display, wherein the virtual environment includes the plurality of avatars that are animated with the synthetic avatar actions.