Google to Add 'Status Updates', Other Social Features to Gmail

Mountain View, Calif. -- Google plans to add new social features to its Gmail service that include the ability to share "status updates" and recent activity on third-party services with contacts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Citing people familiar with the matter, the paper said that the features are expected to be introduced as soon as this week. The Mountain View-based company reportedly hopes to bring Gmail's 176 million users some of the same features they are accustomed to seeing on sites like Facebook, which recently passed 400 million users. "It might look like a minor feature advance, but this is another blow in the war against Facebook," Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at technology consultancy Altimeter Group, told The New York Times.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053480962942848.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/technology/companies/09social.html