The Real Blogger Status

With the pre 2016 Followers gadget, the Followers population for a blog was managed through an Options link on the Followers gadget . This required the blog owner to sign into the Followers gadget, to access the Options link. Authentication - and an owner specific Options menu - is no longer a pert of the Followers gadget. It is possible to Block Followers, from a blog - the option is just not part of the Followers gadget, any more.

The new Followers gadget is out - and is causing some confusion. If you are Following a blog - either your own blog, or somebody else's - and you examine the Followers gadget, you will see a button labeled "UnFollow". Long ago, "UnFollow" was a selection, in the "Options" menu.

When we use Blogger Following, we create a link to our profile, from each blog that we Follow. That's the primary purpose of Following - to see, and to be seen. We also create links from our Followers profile, to each Followed blog. That's the purpose of having a profile - to describe ourselves, by the blogs that interest us. Everybody does not want other people knowing about every blog that we Follow, though. To let us Follow blogs without being seen, we can Follow anonymously - or hide a blog, from our profile on other blogs.

When you Follow a blog, the blog feed is added, as a subscription, to your dashboard Reading List. This lets you read the blog content, conveniently, using the newsfeed. Separately from the Reading List, you can choose whether to have your personal Followers icon displayed , in the icon cloud on the blog display. Besides maintaining anonymity in Following , you can hide any number of blogs, in the Reading List index, to make the index manageable.

As both custom domain publishing, and social sharing networks, become normal with many blogs, we see anguish when blog owners change the URLs of their blogs, without planning for the effects of the change . What happened to my Likes? This blog owner - and many others - do not realise that FaceBook counts Likes, based on the URL, not the blog. FaceBook Likes, and Google+ +1s, are counted by URL - and are not controlled by DNS redirection, or simple name changes. If you rename your blog, you get a new URL with a new popularity counter , in FaceBook and Google+.

We're seeing confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about unfairly limited Blogger / Google support policies. Why can I not Follow my favourite blog, without using a Google account? and Why must I upgrade my computer, to be able to use Chrome? Some blog owners and readers take the support policy limits personally, as if Blogger / Google is punishing them - or their readers - for not using the right account to login, or not upgrading their software.

This month, we have a few reports, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about problems Following some blogs. Why am I being blocked, from Following? Some would be Followers are taking this personally. Please, don''t do that.

Thanks to the Followers rewrite - and the Followers database cleanup - this blog has lost over 500 Followers. Blogger Support suggests that we should publish a notice to our Followers , letting them know what is going on - and why some might be no longer Following. The notice, if published as a post, will go out to everybody subscribed to the posts newsfeed.

How many of you have used your favourite Internet application recently - and received a convenience login suggestion? To continue, please tell us who you are! Login with your FaceBook, Google, or Twitter account. Many small business Internet services, instead of making you setup one more unknown account, are letting you login, and use their product, based on your FaceBook, Google, or Twitter account. This is not a magical concept. It requires a lot of work, to make this happen.

If you did not use a Blogger / Google account when you Followed this blog, years ago, you are probably not Following now . During the past month or so, this blog has gone from 5,300 to 4,800 Followers . Owners of other blogs have reported similar reductions. Look at the Reading List, in the Blogger dashboard - if you use Blogger. Is this blog listed? If so, you are Following this blog, using a Blogger account. If not, you may want to add this blog to your Reading List .

We're seeing some signs of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about the current rewrite of Blogger Followers / Google Friend Connect . When it says that ' non-Google accounts and profiles will be removed ' does that mean my blog will be deleted - since I use a non GMail based Blogger account? There are two bits of confusion here. I've explained a few times that a Blogger account, GMail based or not, is still a Google account . That detail does not change. Next, we should recall how Blogger provided login to the Followers gadget, for those surfing the web without using a Google account.

Some blog owners can't figure out how to add the Blogger Followers gadget, to their blogs. We see occasional confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about installation and use of Followers. After typing https://www.google.com/friendconnect/ into my browser, I am redirected to Blogger Help: Manage blogs you follow How do I install Followers?

Blogger is rewriting the Followers gadget, and removing some lesser used features. One of the features seeing some change is Followers Authentication and Profiles. Long ago, I wrote about Community Accounts , and later about Community Profiles - both features letting you (or someone Following you) provide a blog to Follow and / or Follow other blogs. At the time, Following (aka Google Friend Connect) was part of a complex network of different Followers services - with some Google users, and others non Google users. The ability to use non Google services, to Follow Blogger blogs, made a Blogger blog accessible to more people.

In a separate project, I was updating this blog - and in previewing my changes, I observed the familiar demur We're sorry. This gadget is configured incorrectly. ... In the sidebar, underneath "Follow Me". That sight made me wonder if the Followers gadget, when viewed in the live blog, would again work properly - when recently, I had begun wondering if the gadget would ever work, again . And, when I investigated, I found my musings were correct.

We see new blog owners ask the obvious question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I help people Follow my blog? There are several tools for community building , or Following - and different people will make different choices, which to use. The choices depend upon the community that any blog serves - and the purposes for following .

Blog owners ask about Followers activity, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I can't Follow my Followers! They appear to be referring to the Followers gadget, which is currently useless for surfing.

We see an occasional query about Followers, and the ever varying Followers count in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . Why is my Followers count always going up, then down? Even when I see new Followers, the count is lower today, than yesterday! This blog owner does not know about churn, and reciprocal Following.

One challenging question, that we see from time to time in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , is about one of the neatest Blogger social networking features, Following. How do I find blogs to Follow? And that is a simple question, with not such a simple answer. What came first - the chicken, or the egg?

We see regular signs of confusion, about the various Followers communities, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . My blog still shows 0 Followers. I know this is not correct - because I am one, at a different email address, and so are friends and family. This blog owner does not understand the differences between the communities, and following options.

The Followers gadget was recently changed - and not for the better . Find the Followers (aka "Google Friend Connect") gadget, on this blog. Look for "Follow Me" near the top of the sidebar. Click on any icon in the community display - or click on on the community "pop out" window icon at the top right of the gadget. See how it now opens all Followers content, where the gadget is located?