When Google announced that they were disabling Google Friend Connect for non-Blogger blogs, I didn’t think too much of it. Sure, I’d miss my little window of friendly faces in the sidebar and the slowly-growing number that I was proud to have amassed but I didn’t really believe that it would have any real effect on the site.
I was wrong.
Google disabled the service four days ago and my number of unique visitors has instantly dropped by over a thousand per day. It’s beyond disheartening to see my hard work in building a readership damaged so heavily overnight. Now, if I bide my time patiently, my subscriber numbers will return to original levels as my lovely readers slowly begin to wonder why they haven’t seen a new post from me in a while and manually Google for the web address.
I could do that. But I’m really angry at Google for this and I’m not beyond giving people a little push in the right direction.
So please, on behalf of all non-blogger blogs who have suffered the consequences of Google’s termination of service, myself and the lovely @tsunimee have a proposal.
http://twitter.com/lipglossiping/goodbye-gfc/members
It would be brilliant if our blogging community could get together and dedicate a single blog post to relaying the above image and hyperlink across all blogs (regardless of platform) on Thursday 8th March, exactly one week since Google disabled Google Friend Connect for non-Blogger blogs.
If you are a blogger who has been affected by the withdrawal of GFC, get in touch with me on Twitter (@lipglossiping) and I’ll add you to the Twitter list of bloggers in exile.
If you’re happy to get involved and spread the word, please download the above image – you can choose from three sizes: small | medium | large
You’ll also need to include this URL — http://twitter.com/lipglossiping/goodbye-gfc/members — beneath the image (as I have done) to allow a clickable link for your readers to follow.
Our aim is to raise awareness and promote discussion about other ways in which readers can follow their favourite blogs. I firmly believe that it’s only a matter of time before Google remove the Google Friend Connect service for all blogs in favour of subscribing via their new Google+ service (which is how they’re now conveniently recommending readers follow non-blogger blogs).
Will you help?
Course I will darling. Gutted for you guys – I know I’d be very upset too. Will post on Thursday.
Nic x
I do follow blogs via GFC and eventhough GFC is gone now, I still receive all the updates on my Blogger dashboard.
I’ve specifically gone and signed up to Bloglovin and Hello Cotton since Google removed GFC from non-blogger blogs, as I need a way to have all the posts in one place!
It must be incredibly disheartening to see the drop in visits, what you and liloo are planning is a great idea.
Missy Ellie, it is possible to add blogs manually to Google Reader via URL, so you can still keep everything together on Reader. I know loads of people prefer to use Bloglovin and Hello Cotton as reading platforms though, are you finding you prefer them to Reader?
Ah I didn’t know this. But yes, I’m preferring Hello Cotton so far anyway – it feels a bit ‘cleaner’ to use so I may stick with it in any case. Thanks though!
Oh, and in case I haven’t already said, quite happy to post on Thursday and spread the word!
I want to chime in and say I love Bloglovin because I can read all the Blogs in one place on my Smartphone, it’s the perfect lunchtime ~ pasttime!
Couldn’t agree with this more, count me in too. Will post on the 8th xx
I’m happy to help spread the word. I know we all say the numbers don’t matter but I know personally, I’d be gutted to see such a drop overnight. Hopefully the message will spread quickly x
I will happily support you. Being a non blogger person I came away from blogger because of its instability. It is almost like we are being punished for our disloyalty. I’ll add the banner to my site later today or tomorrow night. A fantastic idea ladies. I too have noticed a drop in my views, Mel x
I only had 170 followers but that was loads to me! I now have 5 email followers which I am very grateful for!
I too am signed up to hellocotton and blogloving but it’s still not great!
I wish I’d never moved to wordpress!
Hi! I don’t have a blog but would be happy to help too. I can’t see the image above…there is a gray square over it….I’ll try downloading it.
Image and link downloaded and post scheduled for the 8th. xx
Count me in! I am so upset with the GFC loss. I hate that blogger is trying to push their subscribers to the horrid G+. Don’t they realize there’s a REASON no one is interested in using it? Stopping a well used service in order to force people to this other service is just ridiculous…
I’ll do it on Thursday! x
I an also a blogger and I will totally add this on the 8th would love to get on the list also.
I will get this queued up on my blog and contact you by Twitter today. This is a great idea! Thank you for doing this.
I will write about this next week as I’m sure it has effected many blogs, I also used GFC and have seen a drop but didn’t realise this was the reason.
I think Bloglovin is great and easy to read to may stick with that xx
My blog is on google blogger but I do not like google plus. With google plus I feel I have less choice in how my name is displayed etc and you are not allowed aliases etc. GFC serves its purpose google have done an own goal methinks
…I’m on G+ and I’m not using my real name…then again, I have multiple Google accts and only use my real name on one of them. I don’t like how G+ doesn’t have a way to automatically update with my latest blog posts, though. I have to go there and manually post the dang things. (And I don’t follow any blogs using G+, not really. I don’t check it at all. When I want to find out what’s happened at a particular blog, I have subscribed to their RSS feed and / or linked them on my blogroll and I go visit occasionally. Which probably irks Google to no end, because that doesn’t let them track my behavior!!)
Yep going to schedule it now!
We’ve also been affected. It makes me so angry that Google are killing a well subscribed service to promote the dead Google+ instead. I’ll be posting on the 8th, thanks so much for organising this! x
I have no idea if I’ve been affected or not – I had the widget on my sidebar, but never had many subscribers, I have more FB followers – but I think I saw that someone tested manually adding their non-Blogger site to someone’s Google reader, and tested to see if posts would still feed through that?
Google, and Facebook, are trying to create…well, “walled garden” isn’t the precise term since there isn’t a requirement that people pay money to use or access their services…but it’s close. They want to become “the new internet.” For those of us who have never been hosted by Google, and who use Facebook primarily as an alternate way for ppl to follow my blog, rather than posting there heavily, this doesn’t impact us much. And as someone who’s been using the internet since 1990, this isn’t much of a surprise. It just well and truly sucks.
Have you thought of also posting instructions for people on how to manually add your site to their Google Reader, if that’s their subscription-method-of-choice? As far as I know, that’s still possible. Just the easy “single-click” bit is gone. It’s easy enough to get around, but only if you know exactly what to do…
So frustrated by the GFC disownage, it wouldn’t be so bad if they’d have scrapped it for Blogger too but most people will continue to use GFC so we non-Blogger bloggers with get siphoned off the blogosphere 🙁 glad to see that so many people are supporting this. I will most definitely be posting this image and hyperlink on Thursday! After everyone’s hard work it’s not fair that this has happened xxx
Even though I use blogger as my platform i’ve noticed since Thursday my views have decreased by nearly half. It’s rather disheartening when you were doing so well and then it’s like no ones looking at your blog anymore. I hate the silence blogger and google have had on the whole thing, they haven’t spoken out about why they are doing it other options apart from their push for google + which in my view is rubbish.
On Thursday 3/8, I’ll post about this…but I’ll also post directions for manually adding blogs to Google Reader (for folks who don’t know how) and / or how to subscribe to blogs’ RSS feeds without using Google Reader, or Bloglovin’. The upsides of being a tech-obsessed geek aren’t too many, but occasionally they do come in helpful…
I use blogger, so GFC works fine for me – but I’d be happy to post this and I will on thursday. I think it would be good to also include alternatives though.
I’ve actually never used GFC – I don’t like it – I prefer to follow via RSS feeds. But, I’m also really liking hellocotton.
It’s scheduled! (which hopefully will work . . . I’ve never scheduled anything before)
What’s a non blogger blog?
I have this blog in my favourite’s list and just drop by when I need a beauty fix, guess I’ve missed something from reading the above posts.
I dislike the way Google has been programmed in the last few months to throw up an advertised site when I try to click on a site I’m searching for and now try to avoid the site. The less Google knows about me the better.
Hi Trimperly,
Every blog uses a blogging ‘system’ and the two most popular ones are Blogger (owned by Google) and WordPress (um not owned by Google). Where Google once shared it’s toys (GFC) with WordPress, it has decided it no longer wants to. This means that non-Blogger blogs have lost many subscribers who subscribed through GFC.
Clear as mud? x
Thanks for your explanation, I mainly read and don’t blog so wasn’t sure what was going on. Shame on Google.
I’ll post too 🙂 x
Count me in!
Thank you SO much everyone, I’ll try and link to all your posts on Thursday – hoping I don’t miss anyone, so send me links on Twitter or email or pigeon! xx
I will send you a pigeon on Thursday via Twitter as I have just written and scheduled a post about this. Really hope bloggers stick together on this and get Google to listen. What once was a useful search engine is now a company causing a daily annoyance.
I’ll post about this on Thursday 🙂
I’ll blog abt it too, it’s a shame people missing out on posts because of sneaky google changing something yet again!
I have just written a post on new ways to follow blogs, and I will be mentioning this post on there. It’s sad that a lot of bloggers hard work is being taken away from them.
xx
I still feel as if they removed GFC to try and force people to use Google+ because they could see it’s not doing as well as they once hoped. :/ I’ll definately be writing up a blog post on this. I’m pretty sure there are a couple blogs I’ve not found to follow on bloglovin’ or hellocotton yet. x
Google does some skanky things every now and then… Considering its so useful, its a bit stupid.
I wrote a response to this with non-Google alternatives on my blog: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffloamia.blogspot.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fnot-following-with-google.html&h=cAQHMMcLvAQEsHR-y8Zf6uFKvUozfcVdWPN_vOrVMzzVnEQ&enc=AZO9zl0DXHQH5EbOqToC3oE9KWeNm0tv1v6ahOdcAVrBj46h9b2YoLhKX-RZQXq5sw6A8lX1MfankumxrNb3XfvM
I like that you and liloo are starting something active out of this, rather than just going “Oh, poo.” I’m sorry you had to deal with that horrible sudden drop in visitors >.<
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http://www.sparklecrackcentral.com/MMU/blog/entry/sign_me_up_following_blogs_in_the_post-gfc_era/
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I also miss GFC 🙁
I have really missed google friend connect, much more than I thought I would. Google is really fickle isn’t it?