Patent ID: 8898229

Claim:
A contact management system comprising: one or more memory units each operable to store at least one program; and at least one processor communicatively coupled to the one or more memory units, the at least one processor configured to execute the at least one program; a first database containing proprietary contact information; a second database containing public contact information; a contact component for receiving proprietary contact information from a user for storage in the first database and presenting contact information to the user, wherein the presented contact information includes information retrieved from the first database and the second database, said contact component providing one or more links between contact information in the first and second databases; a referral component that receives referral data from the user, the referral data identifying a person as a potential referral in the proprietary database and identifying the user as a sponsor, the referral data being stored in the proprietary database, wherein the referral component receives a query from another user, the referral component accesses the proprietary database, the referral component compares a contact list of the other user to the referral data in the proprietary database to identify the potential referral and the sponsor; and an appointment component for receiving meeting data from a user and presenting one or more meeting alerts to the user, wherein when the meeting data includes a link to a meeting pattern of a recurring meeting, the appointment component generates a future meeting entry from the meeting pattern when a future meeting pattern is selected and the future meeting entry falls within a predetermined future time period and automatically generates one or more next future meeting entries from the meeting pattern upon expiration of at least a portion of the predetermined future time period.