1. A method of automatically summarizing an electronic conversation thread, the method being implemented by a processor executing executable instructions on a memory storage, comprising: receiving a conversation thread comprised of electronic communications; processing the electronic communications of the received conversation thread to identify text components, the text components including phrases in the electronic communications; selecting at least two of the electronic communications for use in generating a conversation thread summary; discarding, from the selected electronic communications, electronic communications being duplicates of other selected electronic communications; ranking the selected electronic communications based on ranking criteria including importance, weight or relevance of various features and properties associated with each of the selected electronic communications; processing the text components to identify key words based on the ranking of the selected electronic communications; and generating the conversation thread summary comprising a portion of the key words and the text components, wherein the key words and the text components are selected based on the ranking of the selected electronic communications.