For the last few days I've been watching and reading a whole heap of craziness across the Internet over the announcement that Google Reader won't exist after 1 July 2013. What does this really mean to us bloggers? In my opinion, the answer is 'probably not a lot'.
Will your Blogger/Wordpress account still exist? - YES
Will you still have your Google Followers? - YES
So what exactly does Google Reader do? - It allows you to easily access/read all the blogs that you follow.
How will you read your blogs once Google Reader doesn't exist? - Simply change to another reader such as Bloglovin or Feedly.
These other readers already exist, it takes only seconds to sign up for them. Hey, you can really go mad and sign up for both of them and even stick with Google Reader too for now - there's no Reader Police checking how many you've signed up to and are using - which is what I've done just to try them out and see which I like best.
Your blog isn't going anywhere, you don't need to tell your readers where they can follow you now (how many posts have you read over the weekend telling you just that information and asking you to click to follow them at their new location?!!!). Your blog will still be sat on Blogger or Wordpress or whatever platform you're already using.
I don't believe that you'll lose Google Friend Connect Followers either - this is another separate Google application and not directly connected to Google Reader. This doesn't mean they won't ever make other changes that could affect this application though in the future.
Of course, you may lose some readers if they don't move to a new reader themselves but do you think they're not going to that? Are any of us really going to stop reading all blogs, forever? I don't think so. It's up to the individual to move to a new reader and they can quickly have their old Google Reader blog list transferred for them by the new reader system.
You as the blogger don't have to do a thing - though as a reader you'll probably want to move to a new reader yourself so you can carry on reading all the fab quilty posts out there (how many reads can you have in one sentence?) ;) As I type this post my favourite new reader is Feedly - I'm enjoying using it over Bloglovin via my laptop but I haven't tried either via my phone yet - that's a task for tomorrow. I'll let you know which I settle on as I go.
I wanted to type this post to try to alleviate some of the confusion/worry that seems to be out there right now. This latest Google change isn't a disaster for any of us, but who knows what they'll do next?!!!
