Some people put every form of contact available in their signature line.  Others don’t.  Nobody (that I correspond with) is putting their latest tweet in every email.  To be honest, I don’t even recall where I heard of Rapportive.  Now that I’ve used it for a bit. I can say that it is, without a doubt, the best thing that has happened to GMail since its beginning.

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See, Rapportive fills all that empty space to the right of the email’s body with the IRL and social contact information attached to that email address.  You log in to the major social media services (facebook, twitter, linkedin…) and rapportive pulls public information from their profiles like last status updates and phone number.  It also lets you friend request or follow your contact directly in GMail as well as place calls with Google Voice.

There are also a ton of add-ons (raplets) that let you intgrate Klout, MailChimp, or a whole host of other services.

If you’re using social media and GMail, stop using Internet Explorer (it’s not supported) and download Rapportive now!