Google is planning a new social networking feature for Gmail that allows users to see a feed of status updates and other information from their friends. The feature, which could be rolled out this week, will add a window to Gmail that displays a rolling count of the away messages and current status users enter in Gchat.
Eventually, Google hopes to include photos uploaded to users' Picasaweb accounts and uploaded or "favorited" videos on YouTube, but it's not clear if those features will be included in the first rollout of the service, the Wall Street Journal reports.
(More Gmail stories.)