Hi Everyone - I just wanted to take a second and let you know about a change Google is implementing. They are doing away with their old ways to follow as explained below so some of you may not be getting e-mails in your in-box or may have dropped off the "follow list". I know there are about 30-40 people effected here at Ink Stains because the follow number dropped off that many dropped over the last few days - unfortunately I don't know who they were to let them know.
So if you're following Ink Stains or any other blog with anything other than a google account you may want to check it out and sign up another way just so you don't miss out on any of the fun.
From Google -
In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.
As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.
We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.
We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.
Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer
HI, Roni. So what is the best way for us to follow our fave blogs or to have our blogging friends follow us?
ReplyDeleteIf you have a google account and have signed up under that account nothing will change. It's mainly for people who have signed up using a yahoo, or other type of account.
DeleteIf you are looking for other ways to follow there are usually several options available. For example you could follow Ink Stains by signing up for by e-mail, through FeedBurner, Bloglovin', Feedly or Networked Blogs. Any of them work great, it's just how you prefer to get the info.
Hope that helps!
As I understand this, this friend connect is google's blog reader, but how many peeps actually use this to read the blogs. I use Bloglovin as they send out an email once a day to me with a list of all the blogs I follow that have a new post. Granted this list is usually a day late but I don't miss any updates. And I read the blog in thru their URL not a Google reader. Been working great for me for the past couple years.
ReplyDelete