Patent ID: 7730134

Claim:
In a system that engages in real-time communication with one or more contacts at one or more other systems, a method of tracking real-time communication data, within a single contact tracking application that tracks real-time communication data for real-time communication using any of a plurality of diverse real-time communication providers and applications, the method comprising acts of: querying a global real-time communication data store for synchronized real-time communication data and e-mail communication data which has been received by the global real-time communication data store from diverse communication providers and that correspond to one or more contacts that are dynamically determined at the global real-time communication data store to be one or more recent contacts of a user and based on one or more properties associated with the real-time or e-mail communication data, wherein each of the one or more recent contacts is a contact with whom the user has had a recent communication; and displaying the one or more recent contacts on a user interface in a listing that is generated by a contact tracking application, wherein a plurality of numbers is displayed next to at least one of the one or more recent contacts within the user interface, the plurality of numbers comprising quantities of unread e-mail messages and unread real-time communication notifications, respectively, that have been received from the corresponding contact, wherein the listing of the recent contacts has an ordering that is based on at least one of a most recent communication time, a communication count, or a weighted combination of the most recent communication time and the communication count, and wherein the listing of recent contacts is displayed separately from a listing of pinned contacts that the user has explicitly indicated to appear on the user interface.