Follow a Buzz conversation without commenting

Since the launch about two months ago, Google Buzz has made a series of changes and tweaks, from privacy settings to the rules that determine which posts are promoted to the top of your stream to comment collapsing. More improvements are on the way, and hopefully filtering will arrive sooner rather than later. One other thing people complained about is the noise from all the conversations piling up in the inbox and overflowing the other messages. While it’s easy to set up a filter to archive emails originating from Buzz, the team also implemented controls to let people choose which Buzz is important enough to land in the inbox.

Between all these rapid updates, some newly introduces features didn’t get as much press as the others. One thing that bothered me from the start about Buzz is that you couldn’t follow a conversation without actually commenting on it. And liking had no effect either. But Buzz recently gained that ability, that can be found in the context menu next to the date: it’s called “Deliver to my Inbox”.

Activating this option will cause all future comments posted on this buzz to show up in Gmail like other items you commented on. You can use this feature to bookmark interesting Buzz threads in your Inbox, or just keep up with what people are saying about a particular subject. Unfortunately, the conversation isn’t delivered to the inbox until someone actually comments on it, making it a poor tool to save older Buzz, where the conversation has already stopped. If you change your mind about following a buzz, you can easily “stop delivery” from the same menu.

Personally, I would like to see an option to stop storing the buzz I generate through connected sites like Google Reader or Twitter in the ‘Sent’ folder, or, better yet, to only keep the items where other people commented. Right now there is a lot of duplication and I don’t need the articles from Reader taking up space in Gmail, since I can easily find them in Reader’s shared folder later.

Update: Looks like there is a way to bring a Buzz conversation to your inbox even if it's an old one and people stopped commenting: enable ‘Deliver to my Inbox’ and then ‘Like’ that Buzz as well! My guess is that this action makes a little change to the entire conversation, similar to a comment, enough for Buzz to trigger an update in your inbox. Finally a good, clear use for the Likes in Buzz!