According to a recent report, Rapportive a company based out of San Francisco has been acquired by LinkedIn - the social network for professionals.

Rapportive is known for its browser plugin that overlays Gmail and furnishes information about the contacts. Available only for Gmail as of now, the plugin provides social networking information about the contact by grabbing data from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and displays the same on a sidebar next to their email boxes.

"You can immediately see what people look like, where they're based, and what they do," Rapportive states on its Web site.

The Rapportive plugin has been originally derived from very old sidebar which was inculcated by Google called the People Widget. This sidebar used to provide contact information in the space next to the emails.

According to AllThingsD, LinkedIn may shell out over $10 million to buy the company. But, the purchase hasn't been disclosed yet by either company and no financial details have been revealed either.

Statistics in terms of number of users using this plugin is not available but, back in September Rahul Vohra, CEO of Rapportive had revealed that users viewed nearly 65 million contacts per month.