Who Stole Your Followers?

Did it!!

I have read concerns about losing followers on so many blogs recently and, so far, 24 followers have disappeared from the Friends of my blog. While this seemed strange and has never happened to this extent before, I felt that as long as the 30 or so friends who regularly post comments and have been there for me when my life became difficult, as long as they were still there, I would not really mind. 

But still, it hurts. I read posts by blogger friends who spent a lot of time going over their follower lists or were really distraught to the point of wanting to stop blogging.

Then yesterday, I read this here: 

My friend S. J. Qualls posted an announcement from our friends at Google Friends Connect that said this (Please click on link to read my friend's comment to the announcement):

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. 

(Bold added by me, Inger, Oh, the arrogance of the people at Google!!!)

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.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

I don't know where this announcement was posted, I know I never saw it.  All I know is that many bloggers were upset about the loss of followers and I'm so glad that S. J. Qualls posted this on her blog.