Mountain View, California — Do you check your Gmail religiously, but still lacks to make your way over to Google+ to see what your friends are up to? Well, Gmailers can now rejoice, as Google’s strong commitment to Circles, the contact grouping feature in Google+ is now tightly integrated with its Gmail and Contacts services, allowing users to see recent Google+ posts in Gmail and filter messages by people in their Google+ Circles.
These updates are really only significant and beneficial if you actively subscribe to Google+. Besides, not only does this portrays the continued merger among Google user-identifying products, but it represents increased integration of Google+ into Gmail, which has been expected since Google+ first launched.
The search engine giant will begin introducing some of its Google+ features for Gmail and Contacts over the next few days. The new Gmail goodies comprises filtering messages by circles, viewing Google+ updates within an email, and sharing image attachments on Google+, all from within your inbox.
Google+ users can grow their circles, filter emails and contacts by circles, keep contact info up to date automatically, and share photos to Google+ from Gmail and Contacts, Google says.
“Now when you open an email from someone on Google+, you can see the most recent post they have shared with you appears on the right-hand side of the conversation,” explains engineering director Mark Striebeck.
However, this is the same feature Striebeck introduced last August, there is a new perk: If the sender is not yet part of your Circles, you can easily add the recipient right from Gmail.
In addition to many goodies attached to this update, Gmail users may also now filter their messages and Contacts using their Google+ Circles. Users may view messages from all their Circles or from each individual circle, and even choose to show Circle names on emails in their inbox.
“Looking for the info on an upcoming family holiday gathering but can not remember who sent it?” Striebeck continues. “If you have spent time organizing your Google+ circles, you can now quickly use them to filter your mail, saving yourself from having to sift through that pile of daily deal emails and newsletters. You can see messages from all of your circles at once or from each individual circle. And if you want, you can show circle names on emails in your inbox. Contacts can also be filtered by circles, making it easier to view your social connections.”
As you can see in the image above, Circles is in the left-hand menu now.
One more nifty and cool feature in the new update allows you to directly share an image attachment from an email to Google+ with just one click, and the image will be uploaded to the Google+ photos container. Any images will, of course, be viewable only to circles that users designate to share with.
It may not be the last integration we see between Google+ and Gmail, but the idea is to get you to become an active participant, as the new features are boasted as rather intuitive.
The updates will be rolled out gradually over the next few days according to The Official Google Blog, so be on the look out for a new Circles list in your Gmail and all the other cool new features.