Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts

Any Google Buzz post can turn into a lively discussion. Sometimes these conversations can gather lots of new comments very quickly, turning them into "skyscraper" posts that can dominate your entire screen, especially if you don't check Buzz for a few days. We've heard from many of you that these big posts can be a lot to skim over.

Today, we’re making some changes to how comments get collapsed in Google Buzz. In the past, old comments were sometimes collapsed, but new comments (posted since your last visit to the Buzz tab) were always expanded. Now, if there are enough of them, new comments may be collapsed as well. Here’s the nitty gritty on how it'll work by the end of the day once we finish rolling out these changes:

• If there are 3 or more previous or new comments, we collapse them into a group.


• We leave the latest previous comment (from before your last visit) expanded to give you context.
  
  


• We leave the last two new comments (since your last visit) expanded so you can get a taste of the ongoing conversation and decide if you’re interested.
  
  


• If there are enough previous and new comments, we collapse them together into a single line to save space.
  
  


• You'll see the names of some of the people whose comments are collapsed, which can help you decide if you might be interested in diving into the conversation.

These changes will limit how much space any one post can take up in the Buzz tab and prevent the popular posts you’re not interested in from dominating the stream. We hope this helps make Google Buzz a little less noisy so you can focus on conversations you care about.