Use Gist to Learn More about Your Contacts

For the last week or so, I've been beta testing a new site called Gist, which basically does web searches on people you email with and highlights any new online information about them. For example, Gist let me know that one of my contacts at a tech company had just been quoted in a recent New York Times article; the congrats made for a great lead-in to a request I had.

Sure I could have done the search myself, but with Gist it's all there automatically and in one place. Initially, contacts are ranked by how much correspondence you've had with them, though you can adjust the importance via a sliding scale from 1-100. Each contact's Gist page contains the list of recent new items about the contact as well as any documents you've emailed to them, and any links to pages that were exchanged. (For many contacts with generic @ addresses, you'll have to input their companies manually, but for many others Gist figures out where they work automatically based on their email address and instantly gives you updates on them from around the web.)

Overall, it's a pretty easy way to check up on business colleagues. It's not going to replace Xobni (which we're fans of) in terms of usefulness, but it's yet another simple tool in the arsenal of a savvy networker. (You can sign up for the beta phase here.)