Google has come up with something called people widget. It is a mini-social networking profile function that shows on the right hand side of Gmail. This feature will be available over the next two weeks.

A post on the Official Gmail Blog explains, The people widget surfaces content from friends, family and colleagues that is already available to you but may be hard to find and makes it easier to connect with them.

Gmail users will have an access to a contact's latest emails conversations, a meeting, relevant Buzz posts, and Calendar events. It will be an optional feature that can be either turn on or off in the settings.

The feature will be available globally to millions of Gmail users.

Google Software