The end of Google Reader, where else you can find me

There seems to have been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the blogging community since Google announced its plans to discontinue Google Reader. This seems to have caused some confusion about what exactly they mean.

This is Google Reader, and as the message suggests when you go into it, it won't be available after 1 July 2013.

The confusion is over whether Google Friend Connect (which acts as the blog reader in Blogger) will also be discontinued. Whilst there are no plans announced as yet, the conspiracy theorists seem to suggest that it will happen at some stage, as part of a plan to direct more traffic to Google+ by using that instead.

In the meantime, more and more people seem to be using Bloglovin' as their blog reader of choice. It's not a bad choice at all, it's easy on the eye, you can import your blog reading list from Google Friend Connect or Google Reader, and best of all, it has an app, so you can easily catch up with blogs whilst away from your PC. I've certainly moved my reading list over to Bloglovin' and like the way it works. 

If you're being booted out by Google Reader, or are nervous that you may lose your blog list on Google Friend Connect, there are plenty of other ways to follow me.

If you're on Bloglovin', or just want to give it a try, you can follow me on there by clicking this link and then the follow button.

Whilst at the moment my Facebook blog page mostly replicates my blog, I'm aiming to start adding more photographs and thoughts to make it a little bit different. You can follow me on there by clicking this link and liking my page.

 I'm also on Twitter and Instagram, you'll find buttons for those in my side bar.

Oh, and if you're old school, you can still follow my blog by email. Hopefully there's something for everybody!

Blog Every Day in May - Blog 9 - Favourite Social Media Channel

Image courtesy of emptyglass / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

I used to love Facebook, seriously, I had it bad. Probably five years ago almost everyone seemed to be on Facebook and if you didn't log on regularly you'd not know where people had been, which relationships had ended or what events you'd been invited to. Plus, you'd not get to check what photos you'd been tagged in before everyone else saw them. Seriously, a week away from Facebook and the world would end. Well, not really...

Nowadays my Facebook log ons are primarily to play Candy Crush (I know!) and although I do scan through the updates in my news feed it's not very often I read something interesting. Admittedly, over the weekend I found out from Facebook that a friend was moving to China for six months, but that's very much the exception recently. It's noticeable that there seem to be many fewer photographs uploaded nowadays. More often than not it's friends liking other people's statuses or photos, generally I don't know these people so my interest in the minutiae of their lives is sorely lacking. When it's not the brigade of likers, it's the attention seekers that are still going strong, with their "Why does this always happen to me? :o(" statuses which when any foolish, kind natured soul takes an interest in, they are batted away with a, "nothing", or the promise of a private message. Aagghh! Luckily my most annoying Facebook friend seems to have demoted me to her 'restricted' list which is working brilliantly. Other key frustrations are declarations of love / birthday wishes to friends or family members who aren't even on Facebook and the cricked neck and eye strain you get from uploaded photos which either need rotating or are just so blurred that it's a mystery what you're looking at. Seriously people, please look at your memory card before you just upload the whole thing!

Nowadays, it's Twitter that takes up more of my time. I like being able to catch up on what people are up to with little snippets of updates, it's even become my go to place for news, whether it's national events or local travel news. I have to admit I'm not much of a Twitterer myself (although I've amassed almost 3,000 tweets), but love reading what other people post. There are a number of people whom I follow who I'm genuinely interested in and would love to meet up with.

There's a lot of truth in the saying which I see frequently quoted on Twitter, "Facebook makes you hate people you actually know. Twitter makes you love people you've never met."