How This App Is Making Networking Less WorkA one-stop networking tool called Discover.ly shows people their email recipients' social-media updates in one sidebar.

As we've all heard, it's not what you know, but who you know. Discover.ly wants to supercharge your ability to get to know people. The San Francisco-based company launched in October 2014 with a free eponymous app that works within Gmail to show all your email recipients' social accounts and updates in a sidebar. The goal: to leverage commonalities among social media networks and make it easier to discover the personal hook that drives successful networking.

Discover.ly founder Theodore Summe says he built the technology to streamline the networking power of social media. "The idea was that we have access to social data, but it's all siloed in respective social [sites] and platforms," he says. "We save time by showing users the needles in the haystack in one place."