With 'followers,' Blogger gets--surprise!--more social

Follow that blog!

(Credit: Google)

With blog platforms Movable Type and WordPress adding social-networking features to their software, it was only a matter of time before Google's Blogger did the same.

A post on the official Blogger blog earlier this week announced that users would soon be able to display their "followers"--other Blogger members who have subscribed to them.

The optional feature--along with a notification on blog owners' "dashboards" of how many people have subscribed to their blogs through Blogger--will be rolled out in the next few weeks. A new tab on the dashboard, called "Blogs I'm Following," lets Blogger users keep track of updates to the blogs on their subscription list.

The problem with these sorts of features is that they're inherently limited to readers whose "following" is directly tied to the Blogger software and its members, so it will reflect only a slice of readers. A follower widget (or gadget, as Google calls them) claiming 21 followers only refers to Blogger members, not to the overall number of people reading the blog, which could make the owners of smaller blogs get a bit image-conscious.

But with its Google ownership, Blogger is tying the new following feature into some of its other properties, like Google Reader and the forthcoming Google Friend Connect. The "Blogs I'm Following" tab, for example, can be imported into Google Reader.

[tacit]

Oh, good! Now all the spammers who use Blogger can follow one another. Personally, I'd like to see Google get their runaway spam problem under control before they start adding new features.

[ChrisLang]

On Monday night, early Tuesday morning I saw Google running full Friend Connect on the Following widgets for about 3 or 4 hours. Then about 10AM Arizona time the Friend Connect widget started to slow down, fail to fully load and then finally the Following HTML interface came back and Friend Connect was gone.

This is the most powerful Social Networking development to come along. Why? Because this is where you will find and make new friends thru the Google Social Network: Googling Social.

This is the last piece of the four application Google social network. That is comprised of Gmail, Google Reader, your Google Profile and the Google shared items page and finally Friend Connect.

When you make a new friend on a blog with the Friend Connect widget installed and the other blog visitor accepts your friend request, they are added to your Google chat, both in GChat and Gmail chat, their Google Reader items will be added to your Google Reader "Friend's shared items" and your friends list is portable, showing up in the Friend Connect widget on any blog with it installed.

The reason Google rolled out the Following widget is so that when they release Friend Connect on Blogger any day now, Friend Connect will simply replace the Following widget.

The really big development is that Google is going to finally take RSS to the masses by simply adding a "follow" button to the widget. When you click the button and then confirm that you want to follow the blog then the RSS feed is added to your Google Reader under the Google account you are logged into.

Really powerful stuff and if this is what it takes for RSS to go mainstream, then I am all for it. You can learn much more about the Google Social Network on my site by going to my Cnet profile. Or just Google "Friend Connect on Blogger."

See you on Google Social! - Chris Lang

[ChrisLang]

@ tacit, I think if anything Google's Friend Connect will qualify real blogs on Blogger and identify splogs on Blogger with the Following widget.

If the blog is only there for spam then no one will join the blog thru the Following widget.

If the blog has quality content then it should pull followers for the same reason.

This looks to me as a easy way for Google to let us to create quality indicators as to what blogs we prefer and what blogs we find valuable in our daily Internet content consumption. Just one more way for Google to add data to their database and determine search rankings for these blogs.

Remember that joining a blog thru the Following widget adds that RSS feed to your Google Reader. When Friend Connect rolls out on Blogger any day, the Following widget will be replaced by the Friend Connect interface. All Google has to do is change the code they send to the widget. Pretty sneaky huh?

If you want more on this just Google "Friend Connect on Blogger" and there is a ton of new information and documentation there.

[ChrisLang]

It looks as though Friend Connect is getting ready to go live. New video on the Friend Connect site, the help files are fleshed out and there are lots of rumors. Also blogger has added social features and created a Facebook like interests interface to find other Bloggers that have the same interests in Blogger.

Chris Lang
http://www.googlingsocial.com