Patent ID: 7143054

Claim:
A method of assessing communication strength of individuals that participate in electronic communications, the method comprising: (a) analyzing a plurality of electronic messages generated by a plurality of individuals to identify a plurality of conversations, wherein each conversation is associated with a talker and a listener, and wherein each talker and listener identified by a conversation is selected from the plurality of individuals; (b) determining communication strengths of at least a subset of the plurality of individuals by modeling the plurality of conversations; (c) selecting an individual from the plurality of individuals based upon the communication strength thereof; (d) determining, from the plurality of conversations, a plurality of activity indicators, each activity indicator associated with first and second individuals from the plurality of individuals, and each activity indicator representing a level of messaging activity directed from the first individual associated with such activity indicator to the second individual associated with such activity indicator; (e) identifying a first subset of the plurality of individuals as talkers for the purposes of the analysis based upon a talker criterion; and (f) identifying a second subset of the plurality of individuals as listeners for the purposes of the analysis based upon a listener criterion; wherein modeling the plurality of conversations includes populating a matrix with activity indicators associated with messaging activity directed front the individuals identified as talkers based upon the talker criterion: wherein determining the communication strengths includes simultaneously solving talking strengths and listening strengths for at least a subset of the plurality of individuals using the matrix; and wherein simultaneously solving talking strengths and listening strengths includes solving an eigenvalue problem using the relationships: v=Wu u=W T v wherein W=the matrix; W T =the transpose of the matrix; u=a vector of talking strengths; and v=a vector of listening strengths.