10. A method comprising: a machine segmenting a transcript of a multi-participant electronic conversation into a plurality of transcript segments; the machine summarizing each of the transcript segments to varying degrees, with respect to participation in the multi-participant electronic conversation by a participant, to generate summaries of the transcript segments; the machine merging the summaries of the transcript segments to generate a conversation summary; and supplying the conversation summary to the participant.
10. A method comprising: a machine segmenting a transcript of a multi-participant electronic conversation into a plurality of transcript segments; the machine summarizing each of the transcript segments to varying degrees, with respect to participation in the multi-participant electronic conversation by a participant, to generate summaries of the transcript segments; the machine merging the summaries of the transcript segments to generate a conversation summary; and supplying the conversation summary to the participant. 11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the multi-participant electronic conversation comprises one of an instant messaging chat session, a threaded newsgroup, an electronic mail message, and a blog entry.