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.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein ranking the selected electronic communications based on one or more ranking criteria further comprises ranking the selected electronic communications based on a date and time associated with each of the selected electronic communications.