Google Friend Connect Update -- Please Read

Hi Everyone,

Have any of you with Blogger Blogspot based blogs noticed a drop in followers recently? Well, you are not alone. Looks like some changes are being made with Google Friend Connect requiring all users to have a Google Account in order to sign in and follow blogs. I'm going to post the official notice below so that all of you can get informed and inform others you may know who are not aware of these changes.

An update on Google Friend Connect

Posted: 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 Open Id 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


--------------------------------------------

There you have it, folks. I know signing up for yet another email account is probably not what most people want to do, but I sure hope that those of you who have been following us with a non-Google account will consider signing up for one in order to keep following us --- and not just us, but all the other Blogger Blogspot based blogs that you enjoy.

For those of you who'd rather follow us another way, you can also get notified of new posts by following us on:

• Twitter
• BlogLovin
• Google+
• BlogCatalog 

You can also subscribe to our RSS feed. Here's the XML format, if you prefer.

We've been blogging here for over 7 years now, and really appreciate our followers. Many thanks on behalf of JB and myself for sticking with us. We hope that all of you will keep following us for as long as we keep blogging.

Until next time,

Eddy