Sunday, January 31, 2016

Announcement from Google to followers

Sorry for the inconvenience, but Google has made changes to Friend Connect. As I understand the gist of it, they want everyone who follows a blog to do so through a google account. So, if you've chosen a service other than google, they will not allow you to use friend connect to follow blogs run through the google-supported blog service. Here is their announcement: 

"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."

In light of this, if you previously followed my blog using another service and want to continue following, google won't let you, but there other ways. Bloglovin works well for me. You can also like my author page on facebook or friend me through goodreads. (links in sidebar.)  I'll post direct links to reviews from there.

Thank you to my followers for sticking with my blog!

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