Sunday, August 31, 2008

Show your Followers, new Blogger Widgets

(Important Note: The Following feature will be rolled out to all over the next few weeks, so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry. It’s coming soon.)

Would you like to know who enjoys reading your blog? Or stay updated with your favorite blogs right from your Blogger dashboard? You can do those things and more with Blogger’s new Following feature.
By following your blog, your readers tell you and the world that they’re a fan of what you post. Your Dashboard now shows you how many followers each of your blogs has. With a click on the Followers icon, you can browse your followers, see what blogs they write, and read the other blogs they’re following.
Now that you know who your Followers are, you can show them off by adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar. From the “Layout | Page Elements” tab, click “Add a Gadget” and select “Followers” from the gadgets list. The Followers gadget shows the profile pictures of your followers and gives your readers a “Follow This Blog” link to join up, too.

Your followers can stay updated with your blog with the Reading List that we’ve added to the Blogger Dashboard. The Blogs I’m Following tab automatically shows the latest posts from all the blogs you follow. You can follow any blog from your reading list, even blogs that haven’t added the Followers widget or aren’t hosted on Blogger. Just click the “Add” button and type in the blog’s URL.
If you’re a Google Reader user, you’ll now see a special folder in Reader called “Blogs I’m Following,” full of the subscriptions for all of the blogs you follow. You can follow blogs you’ve subscribed to in Reader, too: From the Reading List on your Blogger Dashboard, click “Add,” then “Import from Google Reader.”

And.... there's more to come! We are also in the process of integrating with Google Friend Connect so you can give your readers more engaging social features. For more details about what we've launched, check out the help articles here:

1 comment:

Christine Gram said...

Is there a way to modify the widget to show all the followers, or at least a random selection of followers so pictures are rotated?