I recently figured out a way to use a service, Rapportive, to find almost anyone’s email who has a profile a social network. Rapportive is a free plugin for Gmail that replaces Gmail ads with information about the person you are emailing (or received a message from). It gives links to various social profiles, along with a picture they lift from one of the various social networks. Recently, I figured out how to get anyone’s email address using Rapportive.

Once the application is installed, open up a new message. Then, type in some email combinations you think are likely that the individual will have. Below, I tried paulgraham@ycombinator.com:

That’s not the correct email address, as you can tell by the “?” in the Rapportive image screen. Also, the email did not return any social profiles that were registered with that email address. Let’s try something else..

Got it! This is an easy way to find someone’s email address that you may not have been able to find using Google. Just be sure you use this intelligently, and don’t spam. For high profile individuals, it’s always best to get an introduction. I use this when I want to meet someone interesting who may not have a strong online presence, and it’s allowed me to meet with some very interesting people.