Sad News everyone, Google Friend Connect {the followers gadget} is going away.   Google Friend Connect is the gadget on most blogs sidebars that allow you to follow that blog. It looks like this:

Google is discontinuing Friend connect for all non blogger blogs.  This means anyone who has a blog not on blogger.  Like wordpress or type pad or any number of other blogging platforms will loose this gadget.  The rumor I have heard is that it will also be going away for blogger blogs in the future.  Google is trying to promote google + instead.

What does this mean for you?  Well if you follow blogs not on blogger then you will need to find a different way to follow them or you will not be able to get their new posts.  My blog is not on blogger.  I am with wordpress.  There has been a big trend of moving off blogger to wordpress and most blogs that have been around a while {and lots of newer blogs} have moved. You will loose your updates to these blogs and possibly to all blogs in the future.

My suggestion is that you follow via rss feed.  The rss feed will still send you every post the blog makes.  Just look for this symbol on their blog:

It will most likely be with their social media icons.  It can be a different color or shape even but look for the little dot with the two lines above it.  It should be easily identifiable.  Mine are at the very top of my sidebar Under the welcome tab after my introduction.  Also if you click the subscribe tab you can find it there.  I also have floating buttons on the right side and it is there and also if you scroll to the bottom of my sidebar you can find it there under Follow Along.

Ok so you click on that button then what?  It will take you to a page that looks like this:

If you scroll down you can see it has every post from Measured by the Heart.  And if you subscribe it will send them to you.  At the very top on the right side you can see your options for subscribing.  I like to subscribe with google because you can read your posts in Google reader.  But there are lots of different options.  You can also get my posts delivered to your email.

Now that you have subscribed to my rss feed how do you see the posts?  If you subscribed via google, you have two options.  I have a google reader app on my phone and I read all my blogs there.  I sign in to the app with my google account and it brings all my subscriptions to me.  I just flip through and read them all.  I really like this option because I always have my phone with me so I can pull it out when I have some down time and read blog posts.  Also, I like reading blogs because to me they are similar to a magazine.  Short articles that you can put down and come back to easily.

If reading on your phone doesn’t work for you, then you can read them online via google reader.  You just go to google.com/reader.  Instead of signing in to blogger and reading them there, just sign in to google reader and read them there.  Here is what google reader looks like:

It’s really similar to reading in blogger.  All your subscriptions are on the left side and the new posts are in the middle.  You can search through them at the top.  See the red button at the top left.  The one that says subscribe.  You can subscribe to blogs here also.  Just click that button and input the url or a few key words about the blog.  It will search for that blogs feed and bring you the results and you can subscribe right there.

I have also heard good things about reading blogs in Bloglovin.  It is very similar to google reader and the steps are similar.

If you have a blog {even if you are on blogger} it is a VERY good idea to get your readers on your rss feed.  Please please use feedburner or another feed delivery service.  Feedburner is free.  The reason for this is that gfc could very well be a thing of the past for everyone soon.  Also, if you ever want to do something else with your blog {move to a different platform etc.} you can easily bring your feed followers with you.  But only if you have promoted having them on your feed and you use an outside source to manage your feeds.  It gives you tons of flexability and options for whatever you might want to do with your blog in the future.  If this is confusing, leave me a comment and I will do a post about it.

If you want to update your followers and let them know what is going on with Google Friend connect, feel free to link to this post.

You can also follow blogs on Facebook, twitter and via email.   I hope this helps you all.  I know I don’t want to loose all the blogs I follow and I especially don’t want to loose any of you guys!!  Let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks for reading.

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