Methods and apparatus for extraction of content from an email or email threads for use in providing implicit profile attributes and content for recommendation engines

A computerized system for extracting content from an email, comprising:

• a computer processor running an email accumulation software application which is enabled to access stored user emails;
• an email account management module adapted to receive the stored user emails from the email accumulation software application;
• a self-learning module in communication with the email account management module for analyzing the user emails to determine at least one of user specific email thread patterns, user specific greetings, and user specific signatures;
• a storage bank for storing the user specific email thread patterns, the user specific greetings, and the user specific signatures together with a user identifier or as part of a user profile associated with a recommendation engine;
• and
• an email extraction module adapted for processing each of the emails, said processing comprising:
• removing any replied content from the email based on at least one of known delimiters for separating original and reply emails, known email thread patterns, and user specific email thread patterns;
• analyzing the email to locate any generated signature patterns for the sender, any known signature patterns, and any user specific signature patterns, and removing any signature content from the email based on any of the located generated signature patterns for the sender, any of the located known signature patterns, and any of the located user specific signatures;
• analyzing the email to locate any generated greeting patterns for the recipient, any known greeting patterns, and any user specific greeting patterns, and removing any greeting content from the email based on any of the located generated greeting patterns for the recipient, any of the located known greeting patterns, and any of the located user specific greetings;
• removing any sent from content identifying a device or an email client from which the email was sent based on known sent from content;
• and
• outputting remaining email text for further processing;
• wherein said further processing comprises:
• analyzing the remaining email text for use in augmenting a sender's implicit profile by deriving key words from the remaining email text and storing the key words as a part of the sender's implicit profile, the sender's implicit profile being located in a recommendation engine database;
• and
• analyzing the remaining email text for question and answer content on specific topics and storing the question and answer content in the recommendation engine database.