I LOVE to find comments on my blog posts. I am TRULY delighted when conversations begin, and when commenting leads to virtual relationships and shared things: ideas, laughs, dreams, troubles, and trials.
My current angst (if I may give it such a grand name) is with the widgets and links that cause/allow following. First, I find that there are many ways: Google Reader, Blogger widgets, and all of those things with 'feed' in their titles like Feedburner and Feedblitz, etc.
the rest of this may be more than you care to know, but it clarifies things for me...
I've recently learned that where you sign up determines what gets linked; not necessarily the info you insert into available fields.
Here's what I think I now know:
If the URL of a blog or photo-stream or 'whatever' that you want to read on a regular basis has a little orange square w/two white curves and a white dot in it, you can follow it. But HOW you choose to do so determines what stuff of yours gets linked to the blogs you would then be following.
I blog on TypePad. I've been following several blogs. I use Google Reader, and I found THAT (if memory serves) on a Mozilla homepage. Doesn't matter, it's easy to find: just Google it. : )
(I would make this link 'hot' for you, but, since I am signed in to Google, I only get my own version of the reader.)
Near the top of the GR, just under the heading is an 'Add' field marked by a blue rectangle with white cross or plus sign. I just click there, then copy & paste the URL of the blog or feed or photo-stream I want to 'follow'. It works like a little charm. And is how I have been following my favorite bloggers, including you.
If you use Blogger.com and follow your friends thru the Blogger site, you will find yourself on the Blogger dashboard in a place called Reading List. In the bottom right of that field is a hot link that says, "view in Google Reader". Yes, the very SAME Google Reader.
That is the place to go, I think, to 'follow' those folks who won't load a Follow Button or who, like me, have very old defunct blogs (0n Blogger), but now post on other services. Like me.
So, very briefly, I put up a follow widget on my TypePad blog. Google 'sneaked' in somehow, and linked that widget to my old - no longer active Blogger blog of the same name: Katethoughts. and a few of you have tried to use it. You've ended up in 2008, hearing a voice that once was mine and still bears a strong resemblance to my current voice. I'm just a couple of years down the road from there. One of you even ended up on Omnicrone Speaks. How surprised you must have been. That sort of stuff is a category on this blog, but I don't post specifically to it very often.
And those of you (four) who can now see my avatar among their newest followers are being shunted to a blog that will never have a new post. Feel free to read there if you wish. I left it there because you can never really delete anything on the 'www', and because my big E ego thinks all that rambling might have value - if only to me.
I'm going to copy this post over there on Blogger if I can figure out how to do so, and I will post the link to my current blog - THIS one. I guess that means there will be ONE new post. : >)
I hope I haven't made you too crazy; I hope you find me; I hope you keep reading and commenting. There just won't be a widget or a little place to see your Avatar on this blog. When/if I figure out something else, I'll let you know.
ttfn
