As I was surfing around procrastinating on Saturday morning I came across Styling You‘s post about how Google in their infinite wisdom are abolishing the Google Friend Connect widget for non-blogger blogs.
I am not happy. I am so far beyond the opposite of happy. For those of you who have no idea what I’m babbling about I apologise. Basically, if you have a non-Blogger blog, the GFC widget allowed you to still have people follow your blog through google and have your blog updates show up in Google reader. No more. Apparently they have caught wind of the fact that WordPress is better* and have decided to punish us all for it. As if coping with their ridiculous, antiquated, buggy comment system wasn’t punishment enough for everyone. And really, they needn’t have bothered. Never being eligible to become a Blog of Note is so freaking depressing as it is.
So what does it mean? It means all the time and effort (and considerable competitions) I poured into increasing my GFC subscribers was a complete waste of time. I thought I was building up my community so that people on Blogger were also part of that community. Apparently I was building a beautiful-ass castle right before the tide came in.
I’ll be taking the widget down at the end of the Month, unless the fact that it’s sitting there, mocking me, overwhelms me and I get rid of it sooner. So if you follow me by GFC and would still like to subscribe here are your options:
Or you can subscribe in a Reader
Or any of the social media buttons on the site – I keep most of them updated with posts as well.
And what does Klout have to do with this? Well they downgraded me from a celebrity to a specialist. The horror. I might have just been coming to terms with my 50-something score as opposed to my 60-something score and now this. Yes. Your outrage is warranted.
Meanwhile, I’ve been trying to ignore the Circle of Moms thing while occasionally pimping other bloggers. Because I find these kind of awards ultimately depressing as I slip further and further away from the top 25 and I shouldn’t care. But occasionally I’m weak and I do care.
So that, in summary is why Google and Klout are dead to me. DEAD. Also I think this turned into one of those annoying, whingey, poor me blog posts. Oh crap.
*sarcasm. I prefer WordPress but I will not engage in the bland meets beige WordPress vs Blogger argument
Oh Zoey, you might just be one of my very favourite people. And I LOVE this post.
I am only just learning about all the widgets I can add to spruce up my WordPress blog. Was just trying to work out how to add the GFC and it’s now redundant! Can’t keep up lol
So if we have already subscribed via GFC will your blogs still show up?
See I read via google reader and if blogs don’t have that option well….I don’t read. I agree it’s stupidly selfish of google. It won’t make people swap over, it will just alienate the clients they already have.
And this is coming from a blogger blogger.
Klout is confusing as all hell. I just don’t get how it really tells anyone anything. My score is all over the place and recently dropped by 15 points. WTF?
No – they’ll stop showing up when Google abolish it for non-blogger blogs in March 2012. So you’ll have to subscribe through the rss option so blogs will still show up in your reader.
Klout have recently changed their algorithm so everyone’s score has dropped as far as I can see.
Ha. Didn’t know that Zoe. That’s a tad small minded of them. So, I wonder if people who follow us WP peeps will still get their readers updated?
Klout’s been dead to me ages ago. Couldn’t be bothered with the ups and downs of klout. Another thing to think about. And the GFC, I hate Google for this. Corporate manipulation. Bastards.
And I understand your circle of mums thoughts too. I voted for people I liked but I got too much to do to keep tweeting about it. Sigh. Besides, not like I’m going to get money out of that too.
Another way is to add the Google Reader Bookmarklet to your bookmarks. This way every time you go to a blog that has an RSS feed you just click on the bookmarklet and it subscribes to the feed.
You find it under Reader Settings > Goodies and it’s the one at the bottom. I’ve found this makes it heaps easier to subscribe as you read. I haven’t found an equivalent for the iphone yet unfortunately.
This annoys me too. I was planning to jump ship from blogger to self-hosted wordpress, but being friendless without my GFC peeps seems a lot like starting over.
Klout sucks. I’m back to being a networker.
I adore you. The circle of mom things annoy me as they are just link bait disguised as a popularity contest. Or is that a popularity contest disguised as linkbait?
As for klout I am an authority on Zombies, That is enough for me.
Oh girl, you don’t come across whingy. Sassy, is the word that springs to mind, sassy and witty. Heh and for the record, I don’t even pretend to understand what klout etc are about. Too old, too tired to care and besides, if I do care, I get all sad that I can’t keep up with the new hot bloggers in town. Also: it’s just more competition in an already over competitive world.
You will always have celeb status here
I’m still with Blogger (at the moment) but I think this sux as well! How will I know which blogs will no longer feature in my reader. I’ll have to rediscover them as I go along… But even then…it sux cos I like to keep updated through my reader. I don’t know why they mess with things that aren’t broken?
Personally I’m pleased that they’re getting rid of it (although I didn’t realise it was staying on Blogger blogs). I could never get the widget to work for me. Now hopefully more bloggers will figure out how to subscribe in a reader without going via friend connect and I’ll get more subscribers. *hopeful face*