Adobe announced some new integration of Adobe Reader and EchoSign, aimed at making it easier to sign PDF documents electronically. Adobe acquired EchoSign last summer.

Jason Lemkin, VP of Web business services at Adobe and former CEO of EchoSign tells WebProNews, “All signatures will be Web signatures in five years. The question has been how to accelerate adoption even faster. Putting e-signatures into the number one piece of software that 1 billion users around the world use to view documents – Adobe Reader – will dramatically accelerate that adoption because it creates exposure.”

“The e-signature market has grown more than 100 percent a year for the past few years, but it has still, in the grand scheme of things, remained niche due to a lack of awareness,” he says. “Adobe Reader is used on 1 billion PCs and mobile devices. There will be no awareness issues in 2012 with EchoSign in Adobe Reader. E-signature usage should quadruple or more this year.”

With the new Reader update, users can send PDF files to be signed from within the application as well as sign documents electronically themselves. Specifically, users can:

- Place a scanned signature into a document

- Get status updates and track the progress of your signature process through the EchoSign UI

We did an interview with Lemkin last summer where he talks more about where he sees web-based signatures going. If this is something you’re interested in, check it out.