If there’s one thing I love about Google+, it’s the fact that you can stick people in different categories and control exactly what they see and when they see it.
Google seems to be rabid about giving you as much of this functionality as possible, and it’s not hard to see why. Facebook is becoming increasingly obtrusive as it turns over the couch to find more money to appease its Wall Street overlords. Google, under no such pressure, is working hard to define itself as the anti-Facebook, so as far as they’re concerned, the more control the better.
And they just debuted the best feature yet. Too bad you’ll never use it.
Essentially, you get a “volume” slider that controls how much of somebody you see in your feed. So if a “friend” starts going off about Obummer or Mitt-Flops, you can turn the volume on his annoying ass down. Similarly, once he gets over himself and starts posting about the things that really matter, like Annie’s Boobs and Annie’s boobs, you can turn the volume back up.
I’ve been trying it out, mostly silencing people, and it’s a wonderful thing and an intensely useful feature. Yeah, Facebook has “unsubscribe”, but this doesn’t remove people from your Wall completely and offers much more granular control. It’s also intuitive and clear, making it much easier to handle.
Now if only anybody was actually using Google+…
image courtesy Google