Tremors were felt in the social media world recently with 2 big changes announced. One change is for the good; Facebook seems to be easing up on the use of third party apps.
Auto-publishing tools can make a social media manager’s job easier, but up until very recently, those 3rd party apps were being penalized in Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm. You can read more about the signs that Facebook has stopped penalizing those third party apps.
Change #2 has caused some pain throughout the blogosphere. Google announced that as of March 1, 2012, it was discontinuing its FriendConnect widget on all non-Blogger blogs. Bloggers who have built up a substantial following through the GFC widget are upset at the potential loss of followers, and unsure how to effectively “transfer” their communities to Google+ Pages, which is what Google recommends.
As is the norm in the world of social media, things are always changing.
So tell us, what do you think about these recent changes? Are you affected by the loss of the GFC widget?
I removed GFC soon after I found out about the news. I want to focus the next few months on getting my GFC followers to subscribe to my blog via RSS and email. There will be substantially less compared to my GFC numbers, but it doesn’t matter – readers are not the same as followers. As long as my readers still get my posts in any one way, and still interacting with me, I’m happy!
I’m lucky that I only added GFC a few months ago. But I’m still worried about losing that group. I’m thinking that I’ll take it down ASAP do no more people sign up and announce that people need to shift to rss. I guess I could build a google+ page but I don’t really see what the plus (haha) of them unless it’s a secondary site. Eg I was only planning to do it for makesfunofstuff.com
I took my GFC widget down about a week or so ago when I first heard about it. It wasn’t a very large group anyway, but I kind of liked seeing those faces on my sidebar.
I’m honestly confused about the whole thing, I have a blogger blog right now, so does this affect me? I’ve had thoughts of moving to WP, so would it be better to get rid of GFC even if I’m not affected?
So this is how Google is going to get us to use Google+, huh?
This is how Google is going to get a lot of people to witch to WordPress that’s what it is called. I know Im going.
So upsetting to work for hard to get loyal followers and build a following and now they go and remove it. I have been fed up with Blogger for quite sometime, but this has pushed me over the edge.
Some of us either make a living or strive to make a living on this and losing their following is a huge detriment. So sad!
XO
Taira