What's hot is NOT hot... disabling 'What's hot' in Google+

... otherwise known as 'how do I get rid of the unwanted rubbish that's appearing in my Google+ stream???'

I'm currently trying to get my head around using Google+ and it's turning out to be most useful as a professional tool.  Which is fine, apart from the fact that by default Google have a seriously annoying 'what's hot' feature which pushes random content into your stream, disrupting the flow of conversation / ideas and essentially spamming you with nonsense.  Now, I can hear my inner fuddy-duddy shouting that last sentence out, but it really isn't a helpful feature at all.  I had a penny drop moment the other day when someone described Google+ as having the advantage of being 'curated' content, i.e. people choose to share stuff there rather than it automatically happening.  What's hot doesn't fit in with that sense of the curatorial at all... but getting rid of it is not as easy as it should be.

So, since I've just been through the process, I thought I'd describe the three easy (but not obvious!) steps to clearing your Google+ stream of twaddle.

1.  Click on the 'What's hot' link on the left hand side of your Google+ page

2.  Find the slider at the top of the 'What's hot' page which allows you to select how much of that content is shown on your stream - it's not obvious, it's a little grey circle on top of a faint grey line

3.  Click on the slider and drag it to the left.  This changes it to 'Show nothing from what's hot in your stream' - which de-clutters things nicely.

Oh, and this doesn't mean I've completely warmed to Google+ yet - it still feels like wandering into a cavernous room and trying to start up a conversation by just talking into the sparsely populated space... then wondering if you're in the right room at all.  But, I'm getting closer to getting it...