Creating virtual areas for realtime communications

A method, comprising

• by apparatus of a virtual area creation service that provides services enabling realtime synchronous conferencing communications between client network nodes:
• from a client network node, receiving a virtual area creation request and a list of communicants;
• responsive to the request, automatically creating a new virtual area, wherein the creating comprises associating the new virtual area with attributes that designate the communicants in the list as members of the virtual area and that define a shared context for realtime communications between copresent ones of the designated communicants in the virtual area;
• and
• administering realtime communications of the designated communicants the virtual area.

A method, comprising

• by apparatus of a virtual area creation service that provides services enabling realtime synchronous conferencing communications between client network nodes:
• from a client network node, receiving a virtual area creation request and a uniform resource identifier (URI) of a network resource;
• responsive to the request, automatically creating a new virtual area, wherein the creating comprises associating the new virtual area with the URI and attributes that define a shared context for realtime communications between copresent communicants in the virtual area;
• and
• administering realtime communications of communicants the virtual area, wherein the administering comprises integrating a shared view of a network resource referenced by the URI with the realtime communications between copresent communicants the virtual area.