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Google Friend Connect Accessory To Be Provided By Blogger

This week, Google announced the end to its website based community building accessory, Google Friend Connect, for non Blogger based websites.
We're retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012.
The announcement notes its replacement with Google+.
We encourage affected sites to create a Google+ page and place a Google+ badge on their site so they can bring their community of followers to Google+ and use new features like Circles and Hangouts to keep in touch.
Blogger blog owners can continue to use the Followers gadget, can use Google+, or can build their communities using both features.

Blogger blog owners were recently offered several suggestions, to integrate Google+ into their blogs.
  • The Google+ badge, placed on the blog, directs your readers to your Google+ profile.
  • You can replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.
  • Replacement of your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile enables you to publish your blog updates to your Google+ followers.

With Google retiring Friend Connect, this allows Blogger to take over its functionality. Blogger blog owners, who like the idea of letting their Followers display their icons on the faces of our blogs, and view our blog updates in the Blogger Reading List / Google Reader displays, can continue to use the Followers accessory.

By removing Google Friend Connect from the Followers accessory, Blogger is hoping that the code supporting the Followers gadget can be simplified, and will become more stable. This will hopefully resolve many of the recently reported outages, both in the blog face display, and in our dashboard and Reading Lists.

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Comments

Gerry Adams said…
I think this is a good move by Google. Who ever used friend connect for anything else anyway?
Louis Frayser said…
Thanks. This is good information. Now I have a decision to make.
Southpaw said…
Thanks for the info.

Do you know if I switch to google+ if my followers will be moved over or do I have to rebuild them.

(google+ intimidates me a little)
Nitecruzr said…
Do you know if I switch to google+ if my followers will be moved over or do I have to rebuild them.

(google+ intimidates me a little)


Google+ is a bit intimidating, at the start, for everybody.

Unfortunately, you have to build your circles from the beginning. And from experience, it's lots of fun guessing who everybody is.

In Google+, you're expected to use street names - not nicknames. In some cases, pictures become the main identifying factor.

It's fun though - and it's worth it. Google+ is easier to use than either FaceBook or Twitter - and the messages can be way over 140 characters (a really annoying limit in Twitter).

Try it.
Southpaw said…
Ouch. I think I have to do though since my Friends Connect is funky.

But if they join will my blog be added to their blog roll or reader? It doesn't sound like it. And honestly google+ has a terrible "learn more" section.

I wonder how this will effect wordpress blogs that use Friends Connect.
I would rather promote my blog using what I already have, rather than adding another site. Networked blogs, bloglovin, etc.
Sarah said…
This seems like a terrible move by Google. I used GFC on my wordpress blog and now it's gone? This makes me trust Google even less that they would just pull the rug out from under us just because we don't use their blogger platform. It seems like they're trying too hard to force people to use Google + because no one wants to use it willingly and Google is freaking out about that.
Sandy Noemy said…
I just started a blog with a blogger account and was hoping to have GFC. But even though i have a blogger account I cant seem to add it to my page.

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