The other day, some one in the office recommended I try Rapportive. Being a gizmo geek, I love installing plugins (yes, I am one of those people) and so I jumped at the opportunity to play with a new toy.

Rapportive's goal is to create "rapport" between individuals by giving them both more information about each other.  And it provides a host of information, including social networks, activity, and more. Take, for example, John:

So right off the bat you have who he is, what he looks like, what his position is, what company(ies) hes involved with, his last three tweets. And… John has a flickr page? No way.

It also has a note section, where you can add your own details about that person. Like a reminder about when they're going to be out of the office. And how much beer there is in the fridge.

For corporate emails—such as info@—it also creates a summary based on the domain's front page and meta data. What I like are the inner links, that give us a link to the blog, news, services, and contact, and the fact that it pulls out metadata, giving us a phone number right there. Very nice.

Finally, Rapportive is extensible through "raplets". Plugins (for a plugin, I know) that let you add details from MailChimp, BookingBug, Brightpearl, Bantam Live, BatchBook, and CrunchBase, as well as giving you options to write your own.

All in all it's a pretty cool plugin, and much better than the Google advertisement bar. You can install Rapportive from their website for Firefox, Chrome and more, and then all you need is a gmail account.