Is that one Google+ friend chatting a bit too much about Steve Jobs' departure from Apple or posting too many vacation photos? Not to worry; the search giant this week added the ability to ignore people.
"We want to make sure you can represent your real-life relationships on Google+—whether you want to connect with someone or not," Google's Olga Wichrowska said in a Thursday post. "So starting today, we're rolling out a new option to Ignore people, in addition to the existing (and stronger) option to Block them."
By ignoring someone, "you'll see less of what a person is sharing," Wichrowska wrote. This is less severe than blocking them, which limits how they can communicate with you rather than just hides their annoying updates. In both cases, the offending party is not notified.
Specifically, ignore stops putting that person's updates in your incoming stream, stops notifying you about their activities, and removes them from your Circles page.
If that sounds good, there are several ways to ignore a person: click "ignore" next to a person's name in the Google+ Notifications bar or stream; via the incoming stream; or from the Circles page—highlight their name and click "ignore."
You can undo any ignores via "More Actions" on the Circles page.
In other notifications news, Google said it will also separate notifications about people who added you on Google+ from those who added you back on the service.
For more, see PCMag's full review of Google+ and the slideshow below, as well as our reviews of the Google+ app for iPhone and Android, and hands on with the Google+ App for iPad.