Goodbye Google Friend Connect

I don't know how it's possible that I didn't know this until yesterday, but Google Friend Connect is going to disappear as of March 1st. Any non-Blogger blogs will be the first to suffer since GFC will stop functioning for those blogs first. Rumor has it that GFC will also stop for all Blogger/Blogspot blogs by the end of this year...though I can't confirm this. So what does that mean for you and me?

I, myself have some self-hosted WordPress blogs where I use GFC, plus my Tattered Sisters blog here at Blogger. I have lots of followers from GFC, and I have followed hundreds of blogs myself by joining them on their GFC box on their blogs. Unfortunately, once GFC ends, that means that any blogs I have followed using GFC will no longer appear in my Google Reader for my non-Blogger blogs that I follow. So not only do I need to add those blogs to my Google Reader manually so that I don't lose them, I also need to find a way to replace Google Friend Connect on my own blogs so that folks can continue to have an easy way to follow my blogs.

Fortunately, Brent Riggs over at Linky Tools, has created a wonderful new (and free!) widget tool to allow you to continue to get followers to your blogs. I just added mine today here at Tattered Sisters. You can see it at the top of the right column of the blog. You can get your own LinkyFollowers tool by clicking on the image above to be taken to their website. And feel free to follow me using the LinkyFollowers tool on the blog!

Oh, and if you're like me and use Google Reader, and you'd like to know how to Subscribe to blogs without using Google Friend Connect, here's what you do.

Go to your Google Reader, and you should see a Subscribe button at the top that looks like this:

Click on that and a box will open where you can enter a Blog/Feed's URL. Then click Add. That will add that blog to your Reader. And be sure to look at blogs while you're on them for options to subscribe via email, or via RSS Feed. Not all bloggers add those options, but I have both of them in my left column here at Tattered Sisters, to make it easier for people to follow me in those ways. Then it's just a matter of clicking a button or two and you can subscribe to those blogs in your favorite reader (or via email). So always be on the watch for those options when you are visiting blogs!

I really liked GFC, but since it's soon to be a thing of the past, we have to start exploring our other options now!