Following / Friend Connect Requires Separate Login

We see confusion occasionally from bloggers trying to use Following or Friend Connect

I want to Follow this person, but when I click on the Follow button I'm asked to sign in. I'm already signed in to my blog, am I being hacked?

or

I clicked on the users picture. Where is the button to Block the user?

and both questions come from someone who isn't aware that Following / Friend Connect are applications separated from Blogger, and separated intentionally.

The Following / Friend Connect gadgets contain iframes, with the frame code sourced from outside "BlogSpot.com" (or whatever domain your blog is published to). This lets you use whatever Google (or non Google) account that you wish, to Follow any blog, and that's independent of whatever Blogger account that you might or might not have open while you maintain your blog. And it requires that you login, separately, to the Follower or Friend Connect gadget on your blog (or whatever blog that you are surfing).

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Two processes - Blogger and Following / Friend Connect. And two separate logins, too, producing the occasional odd result.

In order for you to do anything with Following, such as Block Followers, you have to be logged in to Following - within the Followers IFrame - as a blog administrator. How you are logged in to Blogger, from the navbar, is not relevant - and this is one major difference between the navbar "Follow Blog" link and the Followers gadget.

Another issue here is security. Following presents yet another face of Google, and provides you (your computer) yet another possible problem in security settings. If you see a large blank space where your Followers gadget should be, you're going to have to check security settings in your browser, your computer, and your network. Following / Friend Connect is a separate section of Google, and you (your readers) may have to enable it separately.

Following / Friend Connect is a major application, yet it's deceptively small when you look at it on your blog.

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