Once more Blogger 'helping'
AN UPDATE ON GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT
December 21, 2015
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.
Thanks for posting this - I hadn't spotted it and I noted that a few of my blog readers seem to have jumped ship (can't fault their judgement, at that).
ReplyDeleteWe seem to be having another little swell in the Branding Wars which are such an irritating sideshow in the otherwise useful world of computing and the internet. I promise you, if - as seems likely - Google's next step is to enforce blog readers to have a Google Plus account then they can shove it - I won't be playing any more.
Things are getting out of hand - I've recently scrapped my subscription to a football website because you now cannot use the full facilities of it unless you have a Twitter account. If I wanted an effing Twitter account I promise I would have one without being forced into it by some third party - the whole thing revolves around pointless and unwanted advertising anyway.
Harrumph.
If a thing works don't fix it! , Tony
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