Patent ID: 7849103
Filing Date: 2010-12-07
Classification: G06F,H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method comprising: collecting data from an electronic mail system including at least first and second electronic address books, the first address book associated with a first contact owner and including a first plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information and the second address book associated with a second contact owner and including a second plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information, the collected data including one or more first values related to strength of a relationship between the first contact owner and each of the first plurality of contacts and including one or more second values related to a strength of relationship between the second contact owner and each of the second plurality of contacts, wherein at least one of the first values and one of the second values is a quantity regarding email communications between respective contact and contact owner; determining first and second strength scores respectively representative of strength of the relationship between the first owner and one of the first plurality of contacts and of strength of the relationship between the second contact owner and one of the second plurality of contacts, with the first and second scores based on the quantity regarding email communications, wherein the step of determining first and second strength scores includes monitoring email traffic in which the first and second contact owners communicate with contacts within organizations, analyzing contact information in the email traffic between the organizations and the first and second contact owners, and incorporating such analysis into the first and second strength scores; storing the collected data and the first and second strength scores in a computer database; extracting from the one or more values one or more of how long the contact has been stored, how frequently it has been accessed, how recently it has been accessed or modified, whether the contact owner appears to have an identifiable association with the contact or entity, the type of association such as duration, frequency, recency or role, the amount and type of contact data, the pattern and frequency and recency of communication; computing on a substantially continuous scale the strength of the relationship relative to other relationships in the collected data; extracting unique identifiers from the collected data; matching the unique identifiers to a taxonomy of valid entities; and indexing the collected data to unique identifiers corresponding to valid entities.