Getting To The Gist Of It

I signed up for something called Gist months ago. You know how it is out here on these mean SM streets: crazy apps in beta and all of these invites coming your way. We all sign up and forget about these things. Then Gist hits us with the invites and codes and asks us to take some surveys. Folks on Twitter and FriendFeed got all crazed and asked, “What the hell is Gist and why are they bothering us with this stuff?” Some little person on my shoulder told me not to get outraged, even though I couldn’t remember what Gist was supposed to provide. I calmly went to the site and watched the video. “OK, that sounds like it could be something.” I logged in with my invite code and then proceeded to upload my Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts to the Gist dashboard. Hrm?

Whenever I put someone’s name in the search, a page of info sprouts up. I see contact info, the last emails that were exchanged, latest tweets, web links that referenced said contact, pictures and even the attachments had it’s own section. There is a recent news section that pulls in rss feeds, tweets, bookmarking sites, blogs, and sites that reference or belong to each contact. That is one-stop shopping.

And on the main page there is a tag cloud and event calendar, which has all my Google Calendar items.

I don’t know if I should call it CRM, a database, content management system or a rolodex.

But this thing called Gist is all of the above and it’s free.

So now when I need to call someone, I pull up my Gist dashboard. If I have to refer to an email they sent, it’s there. If I need to look at a document they sent, it’s there. And I can be up to date on any news related to them and their company by looking at the news section. The latter is impressive, especially when you are talking to a prospect for the first time or to a colleague you haven’t spoken to in months. And remember, these lists you are uploading are not just your closest friends, we’re talking any and every .csv file, Outlook .pst, Salesforce database, and email batch you want to feed Gist.

Now be aware that you will be doing some manual updating. Gist could be better handling at data, especially when you give them the .csv files they request. But I do find myself adding phone numbers and additional email addresses that didn’t quite make the upload for some reason. There should also be more automatic updates for the dashboard, right now it’s once every 24 hours. Gist is still in beta, but it is already an incredible tool that keeps important info in one place.

Gist has a lot more features, so please check out the excellent video by the folks at The Social Networker as well as the one at the top of the post by @RobertatGist.