Google is trying to push more media sharing and status update features into Gmail as soon as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Gmail users would be able to see a stream of status updates from friends and photos and videos shared by them through Picasa and YouTube.

Although Facebook has come to dominate the social networking space with 400 million users, Gmail contacts represent a formidable latent social network with hundreds or thousands of e-mails and chats between friends. While Facebook could support weak links in your broader social network, Gmail could strengthen your closest relationships.

The problem is that Google has never executed social well. Orkut, its early social networking contender built by Orkut Büyükkökten, languished behind MySpace and Facebook and now is defending its last bastion in Brazil.

The company has also launched other social products like Google Friend Connect and Latitude, but they haven’t seen quite the same traction as Facebook Connect and independent location-based services. (Google Friend Connect technically has more integrated sites than Facebook Connect, but the vast majority of them are from Google Blogger.)

Google also unveiled social search last fall, but the contact importer is a bit unwieldy and many Gmail users don’t have completely public content to share and show up in search results.

It’s the right move, but color us skeptical until we see how it’s designed.

Read the original article at Venture Beat:
Report: Gmail to add social networking features as soon as this week