I am sure some or even most of you that give a stuff about your future have had a summer internship. Most of these summer internships take place in a corporate office where everyone is wearing a suit, using fax machines, and keeping the telephone to their mouth like they are trying to make out with some drunk chick at a bar who is too wasted to pull away. Whether its a sales job, recruiting job, traditional advertising job, PR job, Banking job, whatever it may be, there is one general constant. They are all using Microsoft Outlook as their e-mail client. There aren’t many opportunities to separate yourself from the crowd while serving coffee, filing papers, or making bullstuff cold calls. One way you can is by being ahead of the curve when comes to technical innovations and social media upgrades. Here is one I came across that should make waves around the office. It’s called RedCritter, a social app store that integrates into your Microsoft Outlook adding functionality to your e-mail client. It allows you to scroll through the e-mailers recent tweets, find out where they hang out through foursquare, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Sell it this way, “Boss, information is power, if we have the opportunity to be more informed when speaking with potential clients or partners, why would we not explore that opportunity. Boss, you can tell me you don’t like me, tell me you don’t like my tie, but don’t tell me you don’t like INFORMATION.”
Currently there are 25 applications that RedCritter offers to their user base and more are in the works. They are working on releasing a project management app, and with the Basecamp app, Highrise app, Constant Contact app and even a Dual Clock app for seeing the email sender’s time, there’s no shortage of convenience and context that can be added to the inbox experience. RedCritter seems like they have found an untapped space targeting the 500 million conservative, traditional, Microsoft Outlook users, that are dying for a little social media in their life.
