Relationship collaboration system

1. A computer implemented method comprising:

collecting address book data from an electronic mail system including an electronic address book, the address book data associated with a contact owner and including a plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information;

extracting from the collected address book data, strength data indicative of the strength of each of the plurality of contacts;

determining a strength score representative of strength of the relationship between the contact owner and each of the plurality of contacts using a set of heuristic rules based at least in part on the extracted data, wherein the strength score is determined based at least in part on extracting data corresponding to the quantity of email communications between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts;

storing the collected address book data and the strength score in a computer database;

computing on a substantially continuous scale the strength of the relationship of a contact relative to other relationships of the others of the plurality of contacts in the collected address book data, wherein said computing includes:

monitoring email traffic between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts within organizations, and

analyzing contact information in the email traffic between the organizations and the contact owner, and incorporating such analysis into the strength score;

receiving a query for contacts having desired characteristics; and

returning a list of contact owners corresponding to relationships with contacts or entities having the desired characteristics, wherein the list includes the contact owner, wherein the contact owner and the contacts having the desired characteristics satisfy a privacy policy that includes an opt-out privacy policy permitting the contact owner to totally opt out, thereby precluding all information regarding all of the contacts from being listed in response to the received query.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

extracting unique identifiers from the collected address book data;

matching the unique identifiers to a taxonomy of valid entities; and

indexing the collected address book data to unique identifiers corresponding to valid entities.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

updating the taxonomy to include at least a portion of additional information extracted from the collected address book data.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:

filtering the collected data and determined strength to exclude from the computer database collected address book data corresponding to insufficient strength.

5. The method of claim 2 , wherein extracting unique identifiers further comprises:

recognizing an identifier associated with an entity by a convention of computer networking and recognizing domain names or email addresses as unique identifiers of entities.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

ordering at least a portion of the returned list of contact owners according to the strength score.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the privacy policy further includes one or more policies selected from the group consisting of: a global policy, a group policy, an individual contact owner policy, and an individual contact policy permitting the contact owner to respectively preclude information regarding one or more of the contacts from being listed in response to the received query.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the electronic mail system includes a second electronic address book associated with a second contact owner and a second plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information, and wherein the method further comprises:

rendering the second contact owner anonymous in the returned list; and

providing access to anonymous communication with the anonymous contact owner.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

providing a communication method for contacting a contact owner on the returned list.

10. A system for processing data, comprising:

a data collecting module which collects address book data from an electronic mail system including an electronic address book, the address book data associated with a contact owner and including a plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information;

at least one processor executing a process to extract from the collected address book data, strength data indicative of the strength of each of the plurality of contacts;

the at least one processor executing a process to determine a strength score representative of strength of the relationship between the contact owner and each of the plurality of contacts using a set of heuristic rules based at least in part on the extracted data, wherein the strength score is determined based at least in part on extracting data corresponding to the quantity of email communications between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts;

a memory configured to store the collected address book data and the strength score in a computer database;

a module which computes on a substantially continuous scale the strength of the relationship of a contact relative to other relationships of the others of the plurality of contacts in the collected address book data, wherein said computing includes:

monitoring email traffic between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts within organizations, and

analyzing contact information in the email traffic between the organizations and the contact owner, and incorporating such analysis into the strength score;

a user interface configured to receive a query for contacts having desired characteristics; and

the user interface configured to return a list of contact owners corresponding to relationships with contacts or entities having the desired characteristics, wherein the contact owner and the contacts having the desired characteristics satisfy a privacy policy that includes an opt-out privacy policy permitting the contact owner to totally opt out, thereby precluding all information regarding all of the contacts from being listed in response to the received query.

11. The system of claim 10 , further comprising:

a module which extracts unique identifiers from the collected address book data;

a module which matches the unique identifiers to a taxonomy of valid entities; and

a module which indexes the collected address book data to unique identifiers corresponding to valid entities.

12. The system of claim 11 , further comprising:

a module which updates the taxonomy to include at least a portion of additional information extracted from the collected address book data.

13. The system of claim 12 , further comprising:

a module which filters the collected data and evaluated strength to exclude from the computer database collected address book data corresponding to insufficient strength.

14. The system of claim 11 , wherein the module which extracts unique identifiers further comprises:

a sub-module which recognizes an identifier associated with an entity by a convention of computer networking and recognizes domain names or email addresses as unique identifiers of entities.

15. The system of claim 10 , further comprising:

a module which orders the returned list of contact owners according to the evaluated strength of relationships to those contacts or entities having the desired characteristics.

16. The system of claim 10 ,

wherein the privacy policy further includes one or more policies selected from the group consisting of: a global policy, a group policy, an individual contact owner policy, and an individual contact policy.