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[START OF AUDIO] Steve Dotto here. You are going to like what
we have to show you today. It�s a Gmail add-on called Rapportive and what Rapportive
does is it gives us contextual information about whoever we happen to be communicating
with within our Gmail interface. Now there folks got bought last year by LinkedIn. It�s
a tremendous tool. I don�t know how it flew under my radar for so long but I've discovered
it now and I really like it. Everybody I show it to, same reaction. Wow, what a great tool.
Let me show you why it�s a great tool. It kind of follows the themes that we�re
seeing with a lot of the new smartphones around social hubbing. We see it with Microsoft in
their mobility platform and then we see it with Blackberry with the Blackberry hub now,
which is all of the contextual information about who we happen to be communication with.
Let me open up an email here from Todd. It�s all basically brought together for us and
then delivered to us so we have context with whoever we happen to be communicating with.
So here for example is I�ve just opened up the last email I�ve been going back and
forth with Todd with. We can see that here where Gmail would normally be delivering ads,
now they�re delivering some deeply useful information. They pull all of the social media
assets of the person that you�re talking to and also your communications with them
and basically compile it here in these columns. You can see the person�s name, their email
address of course, their bonafides, and then down below we see their Twitter feed, we see
if they�re our Facebook friend, their LinkedIn. It tells us whether we�re connected with
them or not. If we want to go to any of their social media assets, we just click on it.
As well, it�s got a listing of the most recent emails that you�ve had as well as
their phone number and all sorts of other information. So if you�re working away on
an email and you decided you needed to phone them, instead of going into your Contact Book,
you�ve got all of that information right there. Having all of this different information
about who we happen to be communicating with and our history of communication brought right
into basically the work pane that we�re working in, with whatever we�re communicating
with them at that moment is a really useful tool. The more you use it, the more you appreciate
it. Eventually, you�ll start to develop some
new habits, I think, as a result of this sort of stuff which will kind of engender more
permanent communication and a better communication flow. For example, anybody that you�re not
already connected by LinkedIn with, if you�re sending emails back and forth, now is a great
place to just click Connect and then it will connect you by LinkedIn. Similarly if you�re
not following them on Twitter and you�re sending a lot of emails back and forth, I
should follow this person on Twitter so I can click to Follow them on Twitter. So you
have the ability to connect with them as well as see exactly what it is that they happen
to be talking about. Who knows? Maybe this contextual information
can come in as a real benefit at times. For example, maybe you�re going to be sending
somebody an email, kind of busting their chops saying, �Hey, you were supposed to give
me that proposal last week.� Then when you look you see in their status update that something�s
happened in their lives, they have a sick child in their family or maybe something�s
happened that would legitimately cause them to be a little bit behind in their work. So
now instead of calling them to task for something that you now know the reason for, you can
give them a pass and kind of deal with them in a kinder, gentler way. Heaven knows, the
world could use kinder and more gentle communications from time to time, could it not?
Overall, I think Rapportive is a terrific add-on. It works in all of the main browsers.
It�s a free add-on that�s now been bought by LinkedIn. I think certainly if you live
in the Gmail world, as I do now, it�s something that is a worthwhile add-on.
I hope you found this video worthwhile. If you have, please give us a Like. We always
appreciate the kudos. I�m Steve Dotto. We will see you again very soon, I hope.
[END OF AUDIO] Steve Dotto0Rapportive for Gmail0June 11,
2013
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