Google+ Now Lets You "Ignore" People You Don't Like

When it comes to dealing with annoying people on social networks, the options are usually pretty limited. You either deal with them or use a blunt “block” feature that virtually every social network today  offers. Google+, however, just added a bit of nuance to its block function. Instead of just having to cut off people completely and ensure that they will never see any of your posts, you can now also choose to just “ignore” people. While Google+’s “block” feature makes you practically invisible to those folks, the new “ignore” feature is slightly less dramatic and takes a different approach. It basically just ensures that you don’t have to deal with these people, won’t see their posts and won’t get notified about their activities on the service, but still lets them see your content and interact with it.

Here is how Google explains the difference:

The Ignore option is available from multiple places on Google+. And importantly: we don’t notify people that you’ve ignored them. Let me show you how it works: [list]

• you won’t see any of their posts in the Incoming stream
• you won’t get notifications about their activities
• you won’t see them on your Circles page[/list]

Overall, this looks like a good idea that brings a useful real-life metaphor to social networks. We don’t, after all, always just completely block out all the people we don’t really want to deal with – we just ignore them.