on user b 39 s personal directory 20 as a starting point to find more interesting persons user a accesses some of the information contained in directory 20 about other users with collaborative conferencing capability with whom user b communicates this technique is called recursive identification of individuals the information that user a can access is limited according to permissions assigned to each record in the directory by user b fig3 shows an example of different permissions designated by user b the directory 20 contains individual records 300 304 that correspond to individuals with collaborative conferencing capability the list of users 300 304 is by no means extensive and is not representative of all of the possible users that could be included in the directory 20 records 300 304 contain user information that includes but is not limited to users 39 e mail address users 39 names and virtual space room login names picture id 39 s etc there are different levels of permissions that the user b can assign to the users records 300 304 in the directory 20 because any other user of the system in the present invention can get access to some information user 12 assigns access permissions to records 300 304 these permissions define how much information can be accessed by the other.