Did you know that Gmail can also be a great tool to identify someone who inquired about your domain name, even if you’ve never had any dealings with the person before?

Let’s say you receive an inquiry from someone that you don’t know. Perhaps the email isn’t signed (most likely a tire kicker or something else) or the buyer has a generic name like “John Smith.” Searching Google or Bing for the person might be a bit of a challenge, even with the email address. However, Gmail might actually identify the person for you.

When you search your Gmail account for the email address, if that email address is attached to a Google Plus page, it will be listed above your mail results. You can click the person’s name and be taken directly to the Google Plus page. If the person regularly posts on Google+, you can likely use that insight to find out why they want your domain name. You can obviously learn quite a bit about a buyer based on an active social media profile.

You might ask why you would search Gmail and not simply search for an email adress on Google Plus. I always search Gmail to see if that person has inquired about a domain name before. If you’ve had a contentious negotiation with the person a few years back, knowing where you left off is important. This search basically kills two birds with one stone.

Keep one important factor in mind, though. If a proxy service or anonymous buyer wants to create a fictitious Google+ page to throw you off, it would be simple. For example, if I was contracted by a Fortune 100 company to negotiate the purchase of a domain name, I might create a fake Gmail account with matching Google Plus page to make me look more innocuous.

Since most buyers aren’t huge companies, I think it’s beneficial to search your Gmail account for the email address of all who inquire about your domain names.

The post Gmail Can Help You Identify a Buyer appeared first on Elliot's Blog.

I assumed it was another domain investor, so I did a quick Google search for the email address of the person who contacted me, and it turns out that the email address is the Whois address on file for someone with whom I was emailing about domain names last week.

I didn’t know why Google did this automatically, but when I looked in my Gmail settings, I noticed that this option was checked off: “Automatically allow people I communicate with often to chat with me and see when I’m online.”

If you are a frequent Gmail user and don’t want to weird people out by having Google request inclusion on their chat list, you should select this option: “Only allow people that I’ve explicitly approved to chat with me and see when I’m online.”

The post Gmail Chat Suggestion: Turn Auto Add Contacts Off appeared first on Elliot's Blog.

Multiple websites are reporting that Facebook will be holding an invite-only event in San Francisco on Monday, November 15th, and it is expected they will announce a new email system or platform that Techcrunch has dubbed “Facebook’s Gmail Killer.” According to the folks at Techcrunch, this project has been referred to internally as “Project Titan.”

This is pure speculation, but it would be pretty neat if they launched this mail service on FB.com (if they own this domain name now confirmed that Facebook owns it). Assuming it is a mail service they intend to launch on Monday, they could also use another name like FacebookMail.com (which they already own), or they could just tie it in with Facebook.com.

In my opinion, launching a mail service on FB.com would be a great idea. I am sure there are still plenty of people who still think Facebook is just for social networking, despite the company’s growth and evolution. By using FB.com, they could somewhat disassociate from the Facebook brand, which could make a mail service @FB.com look more professional and serious. I think it would look strange to receive a job application from someone emailing me from Facebook, perhaps somewhat unprofessional in my opinion.

Google moved away from the Google name when it started its GMail platform, and I think it would be a smart idea for Facebook to use FB.com for mail, if they did in fact acquire the domain name.

**8:45pm Update**

As Andrew pointed out within the last hour, the Whois information for FB.com has changed, and Facebook is now listed as the owner (see screenshot below).  Additionally, FB.com is now forwarding to Facebook.com.

The post Could Facebook Launch a Mail Service on FB.com? ** Updated ** appeared first on Elliot's Blog.

As you can see in the image above, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg is encouraging people to follow his account on Twitter. Not only was Gmail detecting my location via IP address (New York City), but it could also tell that the email was related to Twitter, and it placed a targeted advertisement on top of the spam email.

Over the past several months, my wife an I have received a significant amount of mail from Bloomberg, who is looking to become elected for his third term. He has also taken to the airwaves, bought space in print media, and now is advertising on Adwords to encourage people to follow him on Twitter.

Although I find political advertising to be quite annoying, I think it’s cool to see this integrated marketing campaign.

The post Unique Ad Buy – Bloomberg on Twitter appeared first on Elliot's Blog.

Here are my favorite experimental Gmail features, although I haven’t used all of them yet:

Muzzle
Conserves screen real estate by hiding your friends’ status messages.

Mail Goggles
Google strives to make the world’s information useful. Mail you send late night on the weekends may be useful but you may regret it the next morning. Solve some simple math problems and you’re good to go. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning. After enabling this feature, you can adjust the schedule in the “General” settings page.

Forgotten Attachment Detector
Prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments. Prompts you if you mention attaching a file, but forgot to do so.

Undo Send
Oops, hit “Send” too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.

The post Great Google Lab Features appeared first on Elliot's Blog.