Attention: Blog Friends and Followers

Hello dear friends ~ Have you noticed a decline in your blog followers lately?

I was going to post this next week but when I saw how upset one of my blog friends was, I decided to post it today. {My other post that I had on earlier will go back on tomorrow.}

I remember when I first began blogging, how excited I was when I reached 20 followers. I felt like I had made twenty new friends. Then over time, the number climbed. I was so happy that folks were enjoying my blog. When I reached 100, 200, then 500, I was over the moon. I know most of you bloggers can relate to me.

Which brings me to this post today.... 
Just before Christmas my followers started to disappear. And since Christmas, I have lost well over one hundred and fifty followers. I have also lost ten or more on my Christmas Pudding blog.

Every day I logged on, I discovered that the number had dropped again significantly. I watched as little by little, the numbers continued to drop. I felt like I was losing my friends and I didn't know why. I thought that people didn't like my blog any longer or maybe they found it boring. It wasn't a very nice feeling.

I was alarmed and thought maybe someone had hacked into my account so I emailed my son who has designed a few web sites for people. He wasn't sure what the problem was.

Over the holidays I was busy so I forgot about it. Then the other day I logged on and discovered that the number had dropped significantly again over night. I checked a few of my blogger friends' blogs and their numbers were down too and I wondered if I had missed something. I am not very computer savvy, I'm afraid.

Then I noticed an announcement on my blog. This is what it said....

December 21, 2015

"In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

"We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow."

So, this is what has been going on. If our friends and followers don't have a Google account they will be removed from our accounts automatically.
Now perhaps you all knew about this and I'm the last to find out. 

This makes me sad! Being my own blog administrator, I want folks to be able to read and follow along if they wish. Now, they have to have a Google account in order to follow a blog. 

So, dear friends, if you use a non-Google account to follow my blog or any blog, you will have to sign up for a Google account and re-follow my blog and any others that you were following. 

Did anybody else out there know about this? 

If you would like to have a Google account you may click here to make one. 

A blogger friend of mine once compared Blogland to a friendly village and when some of our blogger friends go missing, we feel it deeply. I hope that very soon this will all work itself out. In the meantime, let's stick together and be there for one another. We are after all, a friendly village in this big land of Blog. 


 Sharing from my heart ~ Sandi