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.


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.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer