While Twitter users adore broadcasting their follower counts to the world, Buzz users have plenty of good reasons to keep such information private--particularly since in Buzz, the following/follower lists are not attached just to a cryptic pseudonym but to publicly viewable account names complete with a first name, a last name, and in many cases an e-mail address and links to Picasa and Blogger accounts.

Combined with Buzz's opt-out privacy policy and automatically suggested followers, this arrangement can lead to uncomfortable situations for some users, such as one user who ended up automatically adding his landlord, another who involuntarily added a one-time contact from a Craigslist transaction, and still another whose list somehow included her abusive ex-husband. If you don't want your contacts to be a matter of public record, you can hide your following/follower list by going to your , choosing Edit Profile, and unchecking the Display the list of people I'm following and people following me box.

If your Buzz feed is getting out of hand, look for several management features embedded in the drop-down menu in the top-right corner of each post. For other people's buzzes, you can choose to mute a particularly active buzz that you don't care about, or stop following that person. For your own buzzes, you can mute, edit the content of a buzz, delete some of the comments, or delete the buzz itself.