Show off your Followers

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:

• What is Following?


• How do I add the Followers gadget to my blog?


• How do I use the Blogger Reading List?


• Following a Blog Publicly vs. Anonymously

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Updates and Bug Fixes for August 27th

The big news for this release is following, but we’ve snuck a few other fixes in since last time:

• As reported on Blogger Buster (and elsewhere), the 3rd party Add Widget API was broken. It has been fixed.
• The new button style appears clickable in all browers.
• The Blog List widget can show thumbnails specified in Media RSS feeds.
• Atom feeds now include the blog’s description as the <subtitle> element.
  

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Updates and Bug Fixes for August 14th

We’ve added a few new features and things in today’s release:

• There’s a new look for the Blogger Dashboard, which we think you’ll find more attractive and functional. If you have a ton of blogs (as we do) try out the “hide” and “show all” links to help manage the list.
• Google Gadgets in your Layouts blog can now set their height automatically (if the gadget author supports it). Read more about adding Google Gadgets to your blog.
• AdSense page elements can now optionally have image ads. We’ve found image ads have a higher click-through rate, so you might get more money if you turn them on. 
  
• We wrote up a Features page to help you keep track of everything you can do with Blogger. Take a look and see if you’ve been missing out on something cool.
• The Flag Blog button in the Blogger navbar now pops up a window for you to tell us why you think the blog violates our terms of service. Flag Blog is always handled exclusively by human reviewers, not the automated spam locking system, so this information will better help them decide what, if any, action should be taken.
  

And also fixed some bugs, including:

• Fixed Moto template header overlap in IE7.
• Blocked the /feedReaderJson URL from web crawlers, to reduce 404s in Webmaster Tools.
• Increased cacheability of CSS and JavaScript throughout Blogger, for faster page loads.
• Button style and layout improvements throughout Blogger.

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Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets!

Fresh out of Blogger's own testing ground, Google Gadgets have now been enabled for all layouts blogs. This new interface allows for the integration of iGoogle Gadgets directly into your sidebar, with an array of customization options for easy tweaking. Also built into Gadgets is our robust Gadget Directory, which lets you browse through thousands of cool gadgets and add them to your blog with a simple click of a button.

You can access Gadgets from your dashboard under the Layout | Gadgets tab (the tab formerly known as "Layout | Page Elements.")

Gadgets have built-in configuration for easy integration into your layout. All gadgets are automatically sized to match the width of your sidebar, and their height in pixels can be adjusted using the Gadget's built-in options. Our large list of Gadgets is constantly growing and evolving. You can browse them all from our comprehensive Gadget Directory, which runs the gamut from sports updates to site counters, and flash games to local information tickers. To bring up the Gadget Directory, just click Add a Gadget from your layout. Have an idea for a gadget that isn't listed? Then build it yourself! We are always on the lookout for great ideas, so please submit your own creation to the iGoogle Gadget Directory, and then let us know about it in our Help Group— we may just add it to our 'Featured Gadgets' Section.

Itching to get started? Have a look at our our help video below for some guidance on browsing, adding, and customizing a gadget on your blog:

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Blogger Babies

Babies are all the buzz at Blogger. Within the last few months we've had three new additions to the Blogger Team: Ryan, Aditya, and Haley. Although it'll probably be a few years before they start sounding off themselves, we get to post some cute pics of them now.

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You Are Not Spam

You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.

At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust. In the spirit of ensuring that you always have access to your data, we have been working on importing and exporting tools to make it easier to back up your posts. If you'd like a sneak peek at the Import / Export tool, you can try it out on Blogger in Draft.

Our restoration today was of all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday's bug. Because spam fighting inherently runs the risk of false positives, your blog may have been mis-classified as spam for other reasons. If you are still unable to post to your blog today you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.

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Spam Fridays

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

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