Gist offers a completely new way to view your contacts from many of the various networks out there in the big Internet world.  Taking a quick look at it here on SamRag.com we feel it is very interesting though it did raise some questions.

Gist Overview

Most of us are now getting used to logging into a new website and be offered to connect to some of our social networks. The ability to post something on one website for example Twitter and have it appear on others, like Facebook, Linkedin and FriendFeed is becoming the norm.

Gist offers much more and left me pleasantly surprised once I give it a quick try. After creating the links to such services as Gmail, Facebook and Twitter, Gist managed to create a comprehensive file about each and everyone in my network.

Working almost like an all inclusive address book it finds all the relevant data for your contact, whether it be a company or a person. Cleverly laid out you can see their web pages, blogs and Twitter updates should they exist.

Gist goes a step further though and analyzes your email communication (and possible more) listing links and websites that you have received or shared with the contact. It also shows shared contacts, though I am a bit puzzled how Gist figures that out, and includes a Google search box.

What makes me even more excited about Gist is that you have ability to edit each of your contacts. Adding photo, addresses and phone numbers for your contact could make Gist the address book I have been looking for.

Gist also recognizes that it will not get everything right and has a merge function. I found though that after I merged a contact some of the updates were lost from the main view, which could just be because Gist is still Beta. It didn't either allow me to unmerge, so currently you can't make a mistake there!

Questionable

Though my first impression with Gist is very positive and I look forward to try it out more, it did raise some questions.

Privacy

Allowing Gist to not only look at your contacts, but in essence all your communications with them raises the good old privacy question. Yes, I allow them to check my Gmail account, but seeing that they have now in essence scanned every single email was somewhat terrifying.

Reading up on the Privacy Policy I found it difficult to establish how much you are agreeing to share. Their commitment to never bulk-invite my contacts to sign-up, left me only thinking "what, are you going to invite them one by one?"

They do state that the data is there for me alone and no reason to doubt that, but I would have liked to see more clearly what data they are going to extract from the services I allowed them access to.

Cost

As Gist is now only in Beta stage it is free for all to try. However, they state that at some point in the future Gist might become a paid service.

While appreciating to be able to test this out for free I will not carry on using this to any extent until I know if and than what the cost is going to be. Gist should decide soon if this is going to be a paid service and if so announce what the price is scheduled to be. It would be somewhat irritating to begin using it regularly just to find out later that the price is too high.

Facebook

For some reason Gist can show you Twitter updates which is great, but doesn't have the Facebook updates. As so many interesting links and photos are shared on Facebook it would really increase the content for each of your contacts within Gist.

Other networks

Hopefully Gist will increase their range of social networks connectivity. Currently only providing LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook it would really enhance their services to include more.

Summary

Gist is something totally new and I suggest for anyone with more than 50 people in their network to try it out. It gives you a new appreciation to how all your social networking sites could work together, and gives you more comprehensive overview of your contacts than any other site I have seen.

Questions to you

Have you tried Gist yet? What do you think are the benefits?