Following…And Stuff

Once again, the ever-changing tide of technology requires me to get all technical and STUFF.

I’m a little late to the party, as usual.  I just found out that Google Friend Connect is going away as of March 1st for certain blogs and that it will likely be phased into Google+ eventually for all blogs. 

Not sure about you, but I’m really not wild about this concept.

Besides the whole “blog my random thoughts and even random-er projects to whoever wants to read about them” thing….sometimes I don’t want everything I do broadcast across 8 different networks at the same time.  More specifically, I don’t want my personal information broadcast everywhere.  Sometimes your third cousin/boss/ex-boyfriend/crazy coworker you feel bad un-friending on Facebook just doesn’t need to see all the junk in your closets, am I right? 

Or am I totally right!?

So my beef is this:  if and when Google Friend Connect transitions to Google+, my Google+ profile (and all the personal info in it – like my last name) will be linked to my blog and all the blogs I follow.

(Caveat:  Instead of being automatically subscribed to our blogs with our Google+ profile, I think we will all have to re-follow everything using Google+).

But luckily, we have other options for following our blogs.

1) Follow a blog via a reader – ie Google reader.  Just click on the little orange RSS button on any of your favorite blogs, and it’ll prompt you along the way to set up a reader service, where all the recent posts from all the blogs you follow will show up in one location and you can flip quickly through all of them to see what you want to read or skip.

2)  Follow via email.  Self-explanatory, no?

3) Re-follow with another following service.

Whaaaaat?

I just found out about this new service, and because it allows for limited profile information, I’m choosing to use a new widget called “Linky Followers” to not only follow my favorite blogs, but to give my own readers (echo?) the choice to also follow with some degree of privacy for themselves. 

If you want to re-follow and not worry about the Google+ issue, look in the right sidebar for the new “Linky Followers” widget.  Click on it to “re-follow” BurbTales, continue getting updated on new posts, and don’t worry about when GFC goes away or what to do about it. 

Linky Followers uses a simple process: you’ll enter your preferred info – as little or as much as you want – into your new (free) Linky Followers profile, include a super-flattering picture of yourself (or not), click done, and that’s that.  Then use your Linky Followers dashboard to follow all your usual blogs. 

I just did it myself and no, I did not provide my last name on my profile, which is just the way I want it.

So there you have a nice, long technical post about following.  Sorry about that.  Not exactly riveting, right?  But now you know you have lots of options for following me or anyone else.  I’ll be back tomorrow to show you some CLOSET ORGANIZATION! Whoop!