Just came across this handy extension for Firefox and Google Chrome. It takes the advertisements next to your gmail messages and replaces them with any info (social network accounts, location, and job) it can find about the email address your message is from.

It does a good job in the tests I put it through… It’s just a quick install, then you give Rapportive access to your gmail account and it’s off and running indexing content on your contacts. Surely you wouldn’t need this for your most frequent contacts, but when you get other emails from people you’re no so “in touch” with, it helps you become more in touch with them, by listing social networks and other information about them.

At the very LEAST, it’s much more pleasing to the eyes than the gaudy ads that Google serves up, but at the best, it could be an extremely useful communication tool. I can see this being an essential addon for people who do business with others over email. It will allow you to get a quick “at-a-glance” perspective of people, and allow you to quickly and easily check out their social networking accounts.

Pros:

• Quick Install and Authentication.
• Extremely useful information for business partners.

Cons:

• Only supports Chrome/Firefox
• Slow in finding information on a new contact

Other Thoughts:
It’s in it’s early stages, and already a GREAT addon, keep an eye on this, and install it you like the idea at all, you wont regret it.

Overall: Rating:

You can download and install Rapprotive here.