With the dawning of Google Buzz, Gmail is becoming more than just an email client for its users.  It’s becoming a social networking hub.  There are too many things that I do on Facebook and Twitter to simply use it for status updates through Gmail, but for those of you that do light social networking activities like updating your Twitter status and surfing aimlessly on Facebook, then check out this little hack for integrating them into your Gmail account so you don’t need three websites open at the same time.

1. Click on the Gmail Labs link in the upper right corner of Gmail.
2. Scroll to the bottom and click to activate “Add any Gadget by URL”.
3. Now go to Settings –> Gadgets.  Here you’ll find a place to add gadgets by URL.

To Add A Twitter Gadget

There are a bunch of Twitter gadgets for Gmail, but this one, TwitterGadget, is simple and won’t crash Gmail. 

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml”

To Add A Facebook Gadget

In the same way you added TwitterGadget, you can add Facebook to your Gmail.  The Facebook Gadget by iBruno will work nicely with Gmail and won’t take away from your email experience. It will also expand into the rest of your Gmail for easy Facebook management.

To add it, copy and paste this URL into Gmail’s Gadget settings: “http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml”

That’s it.  Enjoy!