In a wide area communications network such as the Internet, a public server and an associated database store and make available to a private server personal information relating to an individuals emotional or some other mental or physical state. The private server includes functionality to interpret the personal information it receives or gathers from the public server in order to identify at least one reaction instruction which can be used by a multimedia communications device to convey to a user the state of an individual by generating a human perceivable reaction which can be playing multimedia content in combination with movement if the multimedia communications device is a robot.