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Friday, May 21, 2021

Another fatal blow to blogs and blog posting from Google

 

I have been receiving notices from Google lately that read like this:

Here is what the text says.

FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner) is going away

You are receiving this information because your blog uses the FollowByEmail widget (Feedburner).

Recently, the Feedburner team released a system update announcement , that the email subscription service will be discontinued in July 2021.

After July 2021, your feed will still continue to work, but the automated emails to your subscribers will no longer be supported. If you’d like to continue sending emails, you can download your subscriber contacts. Learn how

The solution offered is not a real solution. Essentially, unless the blogger wants to enter all the email contacts into another commercial email program and take the time to send out the blog manually by email, bloggers will be cut off of a major portion of their followers. It is clear that blogging is now blasé and the effort of reading a blog post as opposed to a meme is now too great to be profitable to Google. 

As a long haul blogger, I will have to re-evaluate my future blogging activity. Perhaps it is truly time to retire?

 

13 comments:

  1. Please don’t retire. You have so much wisdom to share with the rest of us! Your feeds come through Facebook and Feedly to me.

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    1. Thanks for your support and comment. I will be writing about the options.

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  2. I understand the time for retirement but I would miss your blog's

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    1. Thanks for your kind comment. I am considering a lot of different options.

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  3. FWIW, I read Genealogy's Star via Feedly. I will still get notices of blog updates this way.

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    1. You can always follow a blog and subscribe in a reader like Feedly.

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  4. Some members of GeneaBloggers are trying out MailChimp to send RSS posts to subscribers. Not an easy process, but one alternative to the really easy Feedburner widget that Blogger has offered for so long.

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    1. Using MailChimp adds another level of complexity to the process. I have considered that in the past but using MailChimp is more directed towards a formal newsletter approach.

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  5. James,
    I hope you do not retire! I am sad that Google is not going to support FollowByEmail. You are my favorite blogger. I have enjoyed your blog posts for years and I have used your posts to help me with my genealogy problems. I still want to follow you. Your blogs and your webinars are an important part of my genealogy life.
    However, if you have personal reasons to retire, I do not want to object.
    Jeanette Drake
    West Jordan, Utah

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    1. I may move over to video vlogging but that is just one avenue I am considering.

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  6. What about WordPress? I follow one person who has a blog on wordpress.com, and I receive every new article my mail. And that seems to be deliverd by wordpress.com, not by another party like FeedBurner.

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    1. I have explored WordPress several times and always decided it took too much time to simply write. I am also exploring using videos which I am already set up to do.

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