Earlier this month, Google began displaying address book information on your friends’ Google+ profiles. Now the company is expanding its social treatment to Gmail by adding thumbnails of content shared within Google+ posts.

The search giant has been displaying recent Google+ posts in the people widget — which shows you information about the people you interact with — for some time.

The people widget appears when you hover over one of your friends in Gmail. The new thumbnails will act as a preview of recent photos and videos your friends have shared on Google+ — a great way to entice click-throughs.

Google is also making it easier for you to share inline images. Just hover over the image in your email and you’ll see an option to share it on Google+. This is similar to the feature it added a few weeks ago, which allows you to share YouTube videos from your email to your Google+ stream.

With so much sharing actually taking place on social networks themselves, it’s unlikely that you’ll be sharing within your email inbox. However, getting a sneak-peek of your contacts’ Google+ activity is a handy addition.

[Via: The Next Web, Image credit: Elke Fleing]