Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the Blackberry line of devices today announced the acquisition of Gist, a ‘relationship manager’ that socially connects your contacts into your life.
The program works by taking your Gmail, Google Apps, Lotus Notes and Outlook accounts and connecting their contacts in a single database that can then be accessed anywhere a web connection is available and through iPhone and Google Android operating systems.
The contacts that are pulled are then linked into either Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, giving users a truly social agenda with their contacts.
Taking the idea even further, Gist groups together contacts, for example you can look at specific conversations or even people in the same group or company.
While Gist has always worked well with iPhone and Android apps, the hope is that Blackberry with their vast understanding of email and messaging systems will be able to create a more seamless integration of the system, placing it in core parts of their own system such as the inbox and address book.
At this time it doesn’t appear that RIM will kill the iPhone or Android apps, although the exact nature of how the system will be used has not been revealed at this time.
How would you like to see GIST integrated into the Blackberry OS?
