There are many ways to follow a blog, even this blog, and one of those ways is through the popular widget, Google Friend Connect. You may have seen it on our page just to the right. It looks like this:
Unfortunately, for reasons beyond our control, Google Friend Connect will no longer be available on this blog from March 1, 2012. Google will be making this service unavailable to any site not run on their Blogger platform. For many of you, this will mean nothing. But for 402 of you, this means some unfortunate changes as The Plastic Diaries is one of many sites not served on Blogger.
In the official statement recently announced on their blog, this is what Google had to say:
Friend Connect allows webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a few snippets of code. We’re retiring the service for all non-Blogger sites on March 1, 2012. 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.
While this appears to be a blatant attempt to force people onto their newly launched Google+ platform, there is not much I can do about their decision.
What You Need To Know
If you do follow this blog through Google Friend Connect, I am very very sorry for any inconvenience that may be caused due to Googles actions. For many bloggers like me who do not run their site through Blogger, we are not entirely sure what will happen to all the blogs you follow through the widget. We do, however, know that you may very well loose your reader subscription to certain blogs. For this reason, I wanted to explain what is happening and how you can still follow this blog if you wish to.
- There are many ways you can still follow The Plastic Diaries, other than through Google Friend Connect. If you wish to continue reading this blog through your RSS reader (Google or any other kind), you will need to add in our official RSS feed now. You can do so by visiting our RSS Feed page.
- Alternatively, you can follow us through email subscription by entering your email address in the ‘SUBSCRIBE’ section on the right. By doing this you will receive an email once a week with a list of our latest posts. It is an easy way to stay up to date without being bombarded daily with new posts.
- Lastly, you can follow The Plastic Diaries through a number of other avenues and social media sites. You will find us on:
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Bloglovin, Networked Blogs, Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Instagram and most recently YouTube
If you have any questions about these changes, or how to follow The Plastic Diaries, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below or contact us
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If I follow all my blogs on Blogger (which I thought was the same as GFC?) will I be okay?? I’m super confused tbh lol!
Hi Victoria,
Unfortunately GFC and Blogger are pretty much the same thing so yes, this will have an effect. GFC is a way of ‘joining’ the sites you like and Blogger (or Google Reader) is where you read the blog posts. So more than likely, all the blogs you follow through Blogger that are served on any other platform (like WordPress, Tumblr, etc) may be removed.
If you originally added the blog you follow (like mine) through the ‘Add’ button at the bottom of your reading list, than you should be fine and the blog should remain there. If not, I would just Add it again to be safe.
Does that help? Let me know if I haven’t answered something because I know how confusing this is going to be.
xox
Thanks for the heads up! This is very unfortunate, and will affect my blog as well.
It is an absolute mess Nicole. I don’t know what they were thinking!
This is so annoying, way to go Google for making it difficult to follow blogs. I’m hoping because all my blogger subscriptions have been added to Google Reader then I should be ok and not need to re-subscribe, but I’d better keep track of all my fave non-blogger blogs just in case.
Ye it is just a joke. I can’t believe they have done this either. If you use Google reader there is no harm in ‘adding’ the blog again just to make sure. That is what I have been doing and because it doesn’t allow double ups, it tells me if the blog is already included.
Yes that helps, thank you! I have added almost all the blogs I follow with the “add” button on Blogger. Whew! I think I’ll take screenshots of my list of followed blogs though just in case!
That sounds like a very smart idea!
Yuck, this sucks! I use wordpress too. I only just FINALLY signed up for GFC so it’s a pain. Maybe they will change their mind?
Hehehe i hope so Annette, that would be fabulous, but something tells me that just isn’t going to happen