According to some reports, Google is planning on displaying status updates in gmail, similar to Twitter. The Wall Street Journal claims that this feature will be rolled out later this week. Users will also be able to share photos and videos, copying the format of Facebook and myspace.

Google seems to be migrating some of the features of Google Wave into Gmail. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Wave is quite complex to use compared with the more intuitive gmail interface, and if status feeds, asset sharing and networking are added to gmail, then there will be a considerable overlap of functionality which might make Wave less appealing.

But do we really need another social networking app? Soon there will be so many social networking hubs out there that we might need a meta socail network, like a price comparison site for friendship, that draws in feeds from all the social networks using a commonly agreed set of API standards. Maybe I should write some cloud based software to do that once the API is agreed. I don't see it happening in the next 5 years though.