Google Buzz Dials Down the Amount of Noise in the Inbox

Google has been in damage-control mode ever since Buzz was launched and, especially the first week was hell for the developers. Things have quieted down a bit, but there are plenty to be fixed in Google Buzz, something they admit to themselves, so, now, we have a new wave of updates that should calm some of the remaining complaints.

"When you participate in a conversation in Google Buzz, we bring that post to your inbox so it's easy to keep up with the discussion. But we’ve heard loud and clear that buzz in your inbox can get noisy — we feel it too, so today we're launching two features to help with this," Bruce DiBello, software engineer at Google, wrote.

The changes aren't groundbreaking, but they should come a long way into de-clogging up the Buzz inbox, which many have complained about. First up is one very, very obvious feature, the option to select the type of items that get sent to the inbox. Available in the Gmail "settings" section in the new Buzz tab are the options to stop adding posts to your Buzz inbox for 'Comments on your posts,' 'Comments on posts after you comment on them,' and 'Comments on posts after you are @replied on them.'

Especially for people who are very active on Buzz or who have a lot of followers, these options are crucial, as the inbox can get filled with these types of messages very soon, making it hard to find the relevant entries.

Another change tackles the same issue but from another perspective. All the messages that get through to your Buzz inbox will now have an explanation attached to them showing why they got there in the first place, because you commented on the post, you @replied it, and so on. Next to the explanation line is a "Mute," which does what it implies, it stops that particular conversation from coming back to your inbox in the future.