Fresh from Paris:

When Larry Page told Googlers that he was tying their bonuses to their abilities in social, it lit a fire under their collective behinds, and got the teams working hand in hand to get Google users able to browse the web hand in hand.  That’s why we’ve seen so manyupdates lately.  Yesterday, Google made another update, by allowing users to easily manage their contacts and filters right from Gmail and Contacts.
In the official blog post on the Google page, we can see that the biggest update is the ability to easily add a person to a Circle, right from the Gmail panel.  Imagine your cousing second-removed on your father’s side has emailed you to let you know that he’s playing in his 18th new alternative rock band featuring an accordian and banjo, and you notice that the email is addressed to over 200 people, you now have an interesting option: add her to the ‘Distant Annoying Relatives’ circle with one click in the right tab of your Gmail, and then set a filter to ignore messages from those people.

The big question is whether people are actually going to do this.  I’m a big user of Gmail, and I use the label feature religiously to keep track of the various threads of work I have going at any one time: family emails, work stuff and arts correspondence.  I think it may be useful to have every email that comes in from a Gmail user that is within my “Family” circles may be useful, especially if I can filter it to my “family” label and then archive it.
Will you be using the feature?  Check out the screenshots below for what it looks like to have Circles deeply embedded in your Gmail.