Patent ID: 7454470

Claim:
A method for analyzing one or more user's communication messages that contain communications from a plurality of contacts, the method comprising: a) accessing a plurality of communication messages; and b) processing the plurality of communication messages, wherein the processing of the plurality of communication messages includes: 1) identifying the plurality of contacts; 2) assigning a relative priority ranking to each of the plurality of contacts based on the plurality of communication messages; and 3) inferring relationships between or among the contacts, and relationships between the one or more users and the contacts based on the plurality of communication messages; wherein the relative priority rankings assigning step includes assigning the relative priority rankings based on an equation: Importance= Kx 1 +Lx 2 +Mx 3 +Nx 4 , wherein: x 1 =a number of messages the user replies to from the originating contact; x 2 =a number of messages the user sends to the contact excluding replies; x 3 =a number of reply messages from the contact; x 4 =a combined total of messages that are not composed by the user in which the contact is mentioned in the cc or to lines, plus messages from the contact that are not replies; and K, L, M and N are constant weightings.