Google Improves Buzz Based on User Feedback

Late yesterday afternoon, Google updated its Gmail blog to inform users of a few changes in Buzz, the search giant's new micro-blogging effort.

Buzz has only been live for a few days, but soon after the service launched, users found fault with the privacy settings, or lack there of. When Google sets you up with Buzz, it gives you people to to follow based on the people you email and chat to the most. This is the same system used for decided who appears in your gchat list.

However, although this is handy, people quickly found fault with this feature when it was combined with the openness of Buzz. By default, Google showed the world who your were following and who was following you via your Google profile. There's an option to turn this off, but because it's buried in the user's Google profile settings, not many people can actually find it or even know it exists. This means anyone who can find their way to your public Google profile can see who you email and chat to the most. Not exactly a good place to be in if you're in the business of confidential sources or have anything else you'd like to keep on the down-low.

Google yesterday announced that it had moved the "display my followers and who I'm following" check box to a more frontal location, allowing people to easily switch it off.

The company has also added the ability to block someone who has started following you, another thing that people had been a little iffy on. Previously, you were only able to block people from following you after they had created a public profile. Now, you can block anyone, regardless of whether or not they've already created profiles for themselves.

Lastly, Google has separated who's actually following you, and who will be following you by default, once they get a Google profile. Before, you'd see your list of followers all in one, even if two people on that list did not have a Google profile. People without a Google profile do not appear on your public profile in the list of people you are following.

Do you think these changes are enough to pacify freaked out users? Let us know in the comments below.