Rapportive for Connections

Any person who enjoys connecting with others online and off should always be on the lookout for great apps that could provide a better experience of interacting with other people. Rapportive.com is one such app, as it gives you a lot of information about your contacts right inside your Gmail inbox.

This tool is easy to set up, and best of all, it’s currently free. Simply go to Rapportive.com and then click install so it can be added to your browser. Right now, Rapportive is only supported in Firefox and Google Chrome, so if you’re not using any of those two browsers, you’ll be missing out on a great app.

Before installation, Rapportive gives you a warning that it will have access to your private data in Google Mail. According to their privacy policy, it only uses this data securely on your computer and their servers, so you don’t have to be afraid of third party services getting a hold of your private information.

The Rapportive sidebar

Once it’s installed, the next time you log in to Gmail, you will see the Rapportive sidebar. Click on the log in button, and then click allow to let the app access your data. Lastly, it will ask you whether to keep you logged in at Rapportive even when you’re signed out of Gmail, or to log you out whenever you log out of Gmail. Choose an option, and finally, you’ve finished setting up Rapportive.

Now, every time you open an email or chat with someone, information about the person you’re talking to appears on the right side of the page, effectively blocking the usual ads you see in your view. You typically see the other person’s avatar or picture, some information about him, and the social media sites he’s a member of.

Take note that the application can only pull up information about the other person on accounts where he uses the same email address as the one you have in your address book. This is typically not a problem as majority of the people seem to enjoy using only one email address for all of their online accounts. 

Getting connected on other networks

What’s great about Rapportive is the fact that it immediately gives you some nice information about the person you’re chatting or emailing with, so it makes for an excellent conversation starter. You also get to see where the person has other accounts in, so you can consider adding them in other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like. And you even get status updates, which is a great way to keep up to date with what’s up with your contacts.

Establish rapport

The best thing about Rapportive is the fact that it helps you establish rapport with your contacts. Instead of trying to come up with something the two of you can both relate with to talk about, you can simply see the information the application pulls up, and so you immediately have a good starting point for your chat.

And you can even create notes for each contact you talk to, an excellent way to keep track of useful information such as events, meetings or occasions. Finally, the Google ads you normally see can be replaced by something to help you connect with others.  
Why don't you try Rapportive today?  And be sure to tell me what you think!