Google Friend Connect (GFC) was the cute little box over there in the sidebar —–> that is similar to a Facebook LIKE box.
GFC allows readers to ‘sign-in' or join a blogging site. This basically just shows that they like you. And, they will see your blog listed in their account if they log into Blogger. When you follow a site it says “Follow publicly: This site will be added to your Blogger and Friend Connect profiles on all the sites you've joined. You can also see updates on your Blogger Dashboard.”
The problem is, as it says, that once they follow there, they are likely to forget. This is unless they log into their own profile on Blogger to write a blog post. So, others like me that use WordPress for blogging never log into Blogger. So, Google has decided to nix GFC for blogs not using Blogger affective March 1, 2012.
It really does not bother me that much that it is going away. I do have 345 followers there, but that box has proved finicky for quite a while. There were some episodes where I had to fight with the code to get it to work right. Other times it disappeared for days at a time.
What can you do? Well Google wants you to add a Google+ box to your sidebar which many have already done. Mine is over there in the sidebar too. As for maintaining your followers, that is one option. And there are others. So, if you are one of my awesome GFC followers, please take a couple of minutes to do one of the following (PUN intended). And remember to do this on other blogs that you love as well:
LIKE me on Facebook:
Follow me on Google+:
Subscribe to my RSS
Subscribe to my Email
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