Google will soon add a feature to its Gmail service that will allow users to share their status, much like on popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a Monday WSJ report (subscription required). While the news is not yet official, it is expected to be made so as early as this week. The add-on will include a module that will display status updates of a user's Gmail contacts.

The service will be similar to what Yahoo has done with its Yahoo Mail service in 2009, which, for example, alerted users when their friends have uploaded photos to Flickr.

An unnamed informant says the new Google revisions will also allow users to share their YouTube and Picasa content.

Gmail already lets contacts chat in the browser, set away messages and write short messages as their status.