Patent ID: 8145717

Claim:
A telecommunications method comprising: communications devices registering with a presence and availability service provided via a system, the communications devices being communicatively connected to the system, the communications devices comprising a first communications device and at least one other communications device; creating contact lists that are stored in a database accessible by the communications devices, each of the contact lists identifying a plurality of parties for communicating with those parties via a communication event, the communication event being one of: instant messaging, short messaging service (SMS) messaging, electronic messaging, telephone calling, and a meeting identified in a calendar event of a calendar maintained by a calendar service; a contact manager monitoring the contact lists and communication events involving the parties identified in the contact lists and the users associated with the contact lists; the contact manager causing a contact timer to activate after a first communication event takes places between a user of the first communications device and a contacted party, the contacted party being a party on the contact list associated with the user of the first communications device and the first communication event being one of short messaging service, (SMS) messaging, instant messaging, electronic messaging, telephone calling, and a meeting identified in a calendar event of a calendar for the user maintained by the calendar service; if the contact timer reaches a predetermined threshold before the user of the first communications device has a second communication event with the contacted party after the first communication event ended, sending a message to the first communications device having a notification, the notification asking the user of the first communications device to actuate a link to delete the contacted party from the contact list of the first communications device or to actuate a link to initiate the second communication event with the contacted party, the second communication event being one of: SMS messaging, electronic messaging, telephone calling, instant messaging, and a meeting identified in a calendar event of the calendar; and if the second communication event occurs before the contact timer reaches the predetermined threshold, actuating the contact timer to restart counting after the second communication event ends.