Patent ID: 8612492

Claim:
A computer implemented method comprising: collecting data from an electronic mail system including an electronic address book, the electronic address book associated with a contact owner and including a plurality of contacts and a corresponding set of contact information, the collected data including one or more values related to a strength of a relationship between the contact owner and one of the plurality of contacts, wherein at least one of the values is a quantity regarding email communications between the one of the plurality of contacts and the contact owner; determining a strength score representative of the strength of the relationship between the contact owner and the one of the plurality of contacts, with the strength score based on the quantity regarding email communications, wherein the step of determining the strength score includes analyzing a set of email traffic between one or more organizations and the contact owner; wherein the step of collecting data includes extracting from the one or more values a set of data indicative of one or more of timing, type, and amount of contact between the one of the plurality of contacts and the contact owner; extracting unique identifiers from the collected data; matching the unique identifiers to a taxonomy of valid entities; indexing the collected data to unique identifiers corresponding to valid entities, updating the taxonomy to include at least a portion of additional information extracted from the collected data; filtering the collected data and determined strength to exclude from the computer database collected data corresponding to insufficient strength; wherein the step of determining a strength score includes basing the strength score on the set of data indicative of one or more of timing, type, and amount of contact between the one of the plurality of contacts and the contact owner; and storing the collected data and the strength score in a computer database.