Are You Missing Blog Readers?
Now that the dust has settled from the disappearance of Google Friend Connect (GFC) from all non-Blogger blogs, I thought I’d post a followup examining how much the discontinuation affected people.
Those of us who never had the GFC widget on our blogs weren’t affected at all. Same goes for those who have Blogger blogs and still have GFC (for the moment).
But many bloggers had used the GFC widget. At the very least, we might have fewer readers now. Or our newsletter subscribers might be gone.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I fell at the low end of GFC integration. I had the GFC widget on my blog, but I never promoted it for more followers. Regardless of that fact, the loss of GFC affected me. Did it affect you the same way? Let’s take a look.
No Google Friend Connect = Fewer Feed Readers?
I use Feedburner for my RSS feed, and I’d assumed Feedburner reflected only those readers who had subscribed to my blog via RSS. Wrong. Both GFC and Feedburner are Google products, so of course they’d been integrated beyond what I knew.
What this means is that people who had signed in to my GFC widget also counted toward my Feedburner subscriber total. Most of those users didn’t see the blogs they signed into via GFC in their Google Reader, but the GFC/Blogger Dashboard has a mini-feedreader built in.
I didn’t know my Feedburner numbers also included GFC followers and wasn’t just RSS subscribers. Silly me. While two-thirds of my GFC followers had also subscribed to my RSS feed, about one-third had not. How do I know?
Here’s the graphic for my all-time Feedburner stats:
The green line shows my subscriber number increasing—until the blue arrow points out March 1st, the date GFC disappeared for all non-Blogger blogs. That dip represents the number of people who had followed me via GFC but not RSS subscription.
Luckily, I don’t care about numbers, or else the sudden disappearance of a bunch of “readers” would have depressed me. *smile* I know the reality is many people joined sites via GFC and then never visited again.
My only concern about the missing one-third of GFC followers is that some of them were reading my blog in their Blogger Dashboard. All of a sudden, my blog disappeared from their “Blogs I’m Following” list (from what I can tell), and I don’t expect any of them were devoted enough to my blog to notice it isn’t there anymore. (Heck, I wouldn’t notice if Twitter accidentally unfollowed one of my BFFs.) We don’t notice things that are missing. We just don’t.
Those who wanted to follow my blog might eventually find their way back through a Twitter link or something. And maybe they’ll realize they haven’t seen my recent posts in their Dashboard. And maybe they’ll figure it out and subscribe to my RSS feed. Or maybe they won’t.
Life is too short to worry about such things, but from a curiosity perspective, I wondered if I was the only one who saw this dip in feed readers. So let’s compare notes.
- If you had followed me via GFC, do you still see my blog in your Blogger Dashboard list, or has it disappeared?
- If you had GFC on your blog (and no longer do), have you noticed an ongoing traffic decrease as of March 1st?
- If you had GFC and Feedburner, do your all-time stats show a dip like in my graphic above?
- Have you noticed any other effects from the GFC disappearance?
We can’t do anything to fix the situation, but maybe by comparing notes, we can help each other feel better about those “missing” readers. *smile*
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Having wordpress, I never even realized that GFC was like a feedburner for blogger bloggers. (No wonder I thought it was kinda stupid.) I followed people to be nice but it meant nothing to me other than a show of I support you. Only the blogs I followed by RSS did I read.
I think blog reading, blog posting and commenting has been down overall though because most of the writers I know are buckling down and writing more. So I’m sure I had a dip too but at the same time I dropped from posting 3 days to 2 days and stopped posting about the publishing industry and more about my brand. So my blog was in transition anyway.
In other words, I’m not really sure how it affected me b/c it was just one piece of the puzzle. I can say I was psyched to get rid of the GFC badge and had planned on doing it anyway.
Hi Laura,
Yes, I never used GFC or Blogger as a feedreader either, but I know others who do. I thought it was kind of stupid because it didn’t integrate with the RSS feeds of Google Reader. 🙂 So like you, I followed people to be nice and supportive, but I never used it for anything beyond that.
I’m with you on the “no time to read blogs” thing though. *sigh* I used to read about 50 blogs a day. I’m lucky if I get in 10 now. That general lack of time would be reflected in page views however, not in the subscriber numbers (as people stay subscribed until they unsubscribe, whether they read the blog or not). The graphic above is looking at the subscriber numbers, which is why a sudden mass exodus of subscribers is such an odd thing. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Wow, Jami, thanks for sharing this. Since my blog is through Blogger, I forgot GNC disappeared from many WP blogs. Your blog isn’t showing up in my Google Reader anymore, and I always like your blog, but I didn’t even realize it was missing until this post. (I subscribe to 100’s of blogs and assume many bloggers just aren’t posting when their URL’s don’t pop up.)
My numbers always drop when I spend less time reading other blogs. My numbers also drop when I spend less time on Twitter. But, like Laura said, writing comes first for me, and my life is pretty crammed. If my numbers drop, they drop! I’d rather have a finished book!
Word. From the comments on not realizing GFC dropped non-Blogger blogs b/c mine’s on Blogger, to a preference for having a novel completed over high blog numbers.
Hi Carradee,
Exactly. High blog numbers do not translate directly to high book sales. There’s no “x% of blog readers will become book readers” formula. I blog because I like sharing what I’ve learned, and I love helping people. The potential crossover of readers of my stories is an awesome bonus. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Hi Jill,
Thanks for confirming that all non-Blogger blogger simply disappeared from people’s feedreader if they’d only subscribed through GFC and not RSS. My blog should reappear in Google Reader if people click on the link to subscribe via RSS. (And don’t worry. I don’t take it personally at all if people don’t notice my blog disappeared. 🙂 Like I mentioned in the post, I’ve been struck by the Twitter unfollow bug countless times, and I notice only a fraction of them.)
And I’m with you–I’d rather be a writer who blogs than a blogger who writes. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Thanks to Jill’s tweet I dropped in for a visit. It’s a non-writing day so I’m cruising for a few minutes with the tea that is supposed to wake me up. Anyway, I like your attitude Jami, and Jill’s as well. I very much enjoy reading blogs but must be careful not to give it too much time. Book-writing can tend to get lost when not done regularly. You’ve given me things to think about, Jami, as I wonder whether blogging is something I want to start doing. Thanks!! (I mostly only follow the blogs that send me emails. I just added mine at the top….) ; )
Hi Patti,
Yes, blogging can take a lot of time. Honestly, there are some author/bloggers who blog so frequently I don’t know how they ever have time to write.
From the beginning, I’ve limited my blogging so it doesn’t interfere too much with my writing. I post only on Tuesdays and Thursdays (other than my odd Smeagol post 😉 ), but I’m consistent with that schedule so the blogging I do squeeze in comes off professionally. I’m sure my traffic would increase if I posted more, but I just don’t care enough about those numbers. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
Yes, all non-blogger blogs disappeared from my dashboard on 1 March, but I had to go look to see since I never use dashboard anyway. The blogs I regularly read are all listed on my blogroll on the right-hand side of my blog, and when one of them updates, it moves to the top of the list automatically so I know there’s new content.
Hi Juli,
Ah, yes, the blogroll works for that. 🙂 I didn’t know they could be set to show the most recent updates at the top. Most I’ve seen are alphabetical. Thanks for sharing that tip!
Strange…no blogs dropped from my dashboard when GFC disappeared from non-Blogger blogs. Perhaps because I used the “Add” feature when watching other blogs instead of following through Google Friend Connect, so it subscribed to a completely different feed, probably. At least two non-Blogger blogs on my list lost GFC and they were still on my watchlist when they announced what happened.
Still, I hadn’t realized the real impact until now.
Hi Chihuahua0,
Interesting. It sounds like the “Add” function worked differently than the GFC follow function. I wonder if it picks up the RSS feed rather than the GFC feed in that case. I looked through my Blogger Dashboard last night and some of the blogs in my follow list showed up with a blogspot feed and some showed up with feedproxy.google feed. *shrug* No idea what the difference is or what it means. but it might be related. 🙂 Thanks for the insight and the comment!
I didn’t see that much of a change but I replaced the GFC widget with one for my FB page. I didn’t see that much of a change in traffic but I have see a significant change in commenting. 😛
Hi PW,
Oh good point! I’ve noticed that when I post my links on Google+, I often get comments posted there instead of to my article here on my blog. So how we connect with people affects more than just our reader or subscriber numbers. Thanks for the comment!
I am on wordpress, so I never had it to begin with. LOL I’ve always wondered how much more traffic I would get if I did have it. I use the google reader to follow blogs.
Hi Sonia,
Yes, I don’t think GFC was ever about traffic generation–at least, I can’t really see it being used that way. Most people saw it as a community thing, which is why it sucked so much for those really into their GFC community to have it taken away. Thanks for the comment!
Well. I’m out of the loop. I noticed some of my subscribers vanished and I swore at wordpress the other day because it wouldn’t let me add someone to my blogspot reader. I just thought it was a glitch 🙁 You’re still showing up in my reader 🙂 so yay!
On the other hand, boo, because I have a system. I like my system. Now, where the heck am I going to keep everyone? 😉
Hi Lacey,
Yes, I can’t figure out the rhyme or reason for why some feeds work and some don’t, or why some disappeared and others didn’t. I think that knowledge is above my pay grade. 🙂 Good luck and thanks for the comment!
To be honest, I don’t follow my own stats very closely. As for your blog, I keep it both on my iPhone home screen & on my blog roll, so if you post, I won’t miss it. Except now the A to Z challenge is sucking my time dry, & what’s left of it, my publisher expects me to spend tweeting. I feel like im missing a lot this month. OY!
Hi Nancy,
I certainly don’t follow my stats closely either. (Which is why I’m posting about this issue over a month later. LOL!)
Aww, aren’t you the best? Don’t worry, I understand about the inability to keep up with all the blogs you want to. I’m hopelessly behind. 🙂 Thanks for the comment!
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