That's where Gist can help. The site, still in private beta, is designed for anyone who has a large amount of contacts or email, and combines the information you already have on contacts (via your inbox and LinkedIn) with data scrubbed from the web to pull it altogether in a view of our your relationships that just makes sense.
Getting up and running on Gist is simple since it integrates with Outlook, LinkedIn, and Gmail to pull in relevant contact info, calendar events, email attachments, links, and company information. The import process starts immediately, and may take a few hours to complete, depending on the size of your network, but when all is said and done, the end result is a dynamic system that gives you instant access to the latest news on the people and the companies that are of most significance to you. Your dashboard view includes all news on your contacts, as well as a sidebar with appointments (if you use Outlook), email attachments, and links.
Taking a closer look at a contact like Adam Hirsch, someone I communicate with daily for work purposes, I immediately notice that he is mentioned in a news piece and learn that he'll be moderating a panel at UGCX (of course I already knew that, but hey it's a nice reminder). You'll also notice that in my view of Adam's profile I can adjust how important he is to me, view his latest tweet, reference the last time I contacted him, get a quick look at my entire email correspondence with him, and view the links and attachments related to those communications. Further down on the page there's also a place to view recent feed items and the contacts we share.
Users can also get a detailed view of contacts' company info. Gist adds data using Dow Jones Business and Relationship Intelligence, so that you can view a comprehensive company profile complete with news, contacts, and stock information.
Plus, today Gist released a new feature to add even more web intelligence to their system with a way for users to add or ignore new facts (think photos, Twitter names, updated company names) on contacts and companies to quickly update system profiles.
We've barely scratched the surface with all the things Gist can do, and we think it's an incredible service for sales executives, entrepreneurs, super networkers, and productivity geeks. Gist has secured seed funding from Vulcan and is currently free, but they're hoping to attract the type of users who will pay for the convenience of having instant access to the wealth of information available on contacts.
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