Glitch, or Change at Google/Blogger?
Has anyone noticed that if you leave a comment on a Blogger blog, and you don’t have a Google account, you can no longer leave your URL as well as your nickname?
Previously, you checked could leave your nickname and an URL, which would make your nickname a link to your blog when the comment was posted.
Now, it’s not letting you do that. I wonder if that’s a glitch, or a permanent change on Google/Blogger’s part? Knowing Google, I am suspecting the latter.
If that’s true, that may weed out some of the spam comments, but it may also weed out legitimate comments as well. Without a linkback, some bloggers may just skip your blog and head somewhere where they will get something of value (a linkback) in exchange for their comment. Some of us leave worthwhile comments, you know.
So, if this turns out not to be a glitch and is instead a permanent change, those of you using Blogger should strongly consider switching to WordPress, where you (not Google) will have more control over your own blog!
I hope it’s a glitch. The linking back to the commenter’s blog is part of creating a community of bloggers. I checked it out. You were right and it sucks!.
I just posted a couple of comments on blogger blogs. I used the “nickname” field and included an html link to my photo blog, so it can still be done. It’s just such a hassle and there are a lot of people who don’t know how to do any sort of html.
There’s going to be a lot of blogs getting a lot fewer comments. I hope Google gets a lot of feedback about this dumb stunt!
Not that it’ll do any good.
[...] I learned about this change earlier this evening in a post on DCR blogs entitled Glitch, or Change at Google/Blogger? [...]
Here’s a related post from Digital Inspiration that discusses (briefly) Google’s turn to OpenID. Users of “WordPress, TypePad, LiveJournal or any of the other OpenID supported services” can now leave comments with that ID. Pretty cool. Maybe this is related?
WordPress Users Can Leave Comments in Blogger
I haven’t yet come across any Blogger blogs that let me sign in with my WordPress login.
I was wondering why people were leaving comments without linking back to their blogs. NOW it makes sense. I’m giving OpenID a shot.
I wonder is it just another way for google to try and control us bloggers like they have been trying very hard to for some time now.
I don’t think it is a glitch. Blogger has introduced open ID to Blogger in draft yet took away our other option. This really stinks. There was no announcement of this on Blogger Buzz. You think Blogger would have mentioned the switch.
It’s definitely frustrating. Your name linking back to your blog is pretty much a standard, whereas putting a link in the body of your message just looks like spam.
It makes you want to not leave comments on Blogger blogs, yet you still want to participate with your friends using Blogger.
I’ll bet it is permanent, but I hope not.
I find myself increasingly disgruntled with google. I use Gmail and have been a big proponent of theirs, but in light of recent events, I’m thinking of no longer using Gmail and changing my home page…any recommendations anyone?
Why aren’t you using an eMail address with your domain name? If nothing else, set up an eMail account with your ISP and then set up a forwarding address on your domain. That way, if you ever change ISPs, you just point the forwarding address to your new eMail.
You could use Yahoo too. For some reason, Yahoo users have a problem receiving mail from me, so I also have a Yahoo address so I can communicate with them.
You could even set a forwarding address to go to your Yahoo eMail. That way, again, if you decide to drop Yahoo, you can just set your forwarding eMail to a different address.
Of course, the easiest thing to do is to just have your webhost set up a POP mail account for an eMail address on your own domain. That way, that eMail is always yours so long as you renew your domain name.
[...] wrote the other day that Google/Blogger had disabled linking in comments from bloggers who don’t use [...]