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If you're on Blogger and you have enabled email subscriptions, you already saw the notice that the service is being shut down in July. The notice went out in April (or was it March?).
At the time, I was busy with a long-term subbing gig, and I really didn't have the time (or the desire to make a priority) to take care of it. But school is out for the summer, so now I have some time. And one of the first things I wanted to do was deal with the email situation.
Although, it's not like I really have all that many email subscribers. The last time I checked, I had two (my brother and my sister-in-law). Was it really worth it to even have the email subscription thingy enabled?
I got an email about follow.it (and then I got two follow ups when I didn't deal with it right then--because I wasn't going to deal with it until now), and I've noticed a couple other bloggers have migrated to that. I figured I'd give it a go.
I went to download my subscriber list so I could import it, and I was greeted with a shock. I had over 1400 email subscribers. Huh?
Figuring out how to transition things took just about as long as I thought it would. (I gave myself an afternoon.) I bumbled about, and when it came time to import my subscriber list, I didn't notice the "Download List" button. Instead, I clicked on "Import Followers".
This mistake is what made me look through that list of "followers". I was being "followed" by email addresses that could not possibly be people.
They were all outlook.com addresses, and the names on them were... Well, let me give you a taste:
rosadobqrioswwzrosadobwantoniosgrosadocgsjosepdurosadodacarolinagarosadofhsandratpjrosadofwastridyuk
All up and down the alphabet these "names" went. One or two, I can see, but over 1000 of these were there. I have no idea what purpose these random email addresses have in following my blog, but importing them into the new email service seemed like a bad idea.
When I had deleted all of them, I was left with nineteen subscribers.
Nineteen. Yeah, that's way more reasonable. Way more than I was expecting (and I'm grateful to each and every one of you for subscribing), but that number makes sense.
But the reason I mention this, before the Blogger email subscription goes away, is for anyone I may have accidentally deleted in the transition. By now you should be getting the emails via follow.it. If you are not, the "Follow by Email" in the sidebar has been updated with the new link.
(This is only going to apply to anyone with an outlook.com address. Any other address made the transition.)
Wow the bots are out in force!
ReplyDeleteBut why subscribe to blogs? That makes no sense to me.
DeleteGlad you got it all straighten out!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like it should be up on The Spamfiles.
ReplyDeleteJust wow. I think I am going to post about email subscribers (I don't subscribe because I have you on my blogroll.) I really don't have the time to mess with something like this because I am not a skilled user of computers. So,I was wondering what I was going to do about this situation. One blog I follow by email (she's actually one of the people who commented) has switched to followit. The notification emails seem to be working fine for her blog. And it's good I wasn't a subscriber, actually, because I would have used my hotmail (now Outlook) address.
ReplyDeleteThat won't be an issue. Most people just imported all their subscribers without looking. And if your email address is still (dot) hotmail (my outlook address still has the hotmail suffix), it wasn't impacted.
DeleteI don't usually "follow" blogs, I check in on them daily. I follow one, and got an email from either Blogger or follow.it, asking if I wanted to switch over. If you did have 1,400 followers, I say leave it to them to take care of it!
ReplyDeleteBlogger is do away with things too often and be done away with themselves. My son says blogs aren't as big a thing as they used to be. I have too much to say to Tweet, don't want to do Facebook (have it just to save my app games on my phone!), and Instagram stressed me when I was active (too many followers made me feel I had to post for them).
I use Alana's blog roll! I start with her in the morning, and click her links! Thanks Alana!
I follow all my blogs via Feedly. I can sort the blogs into categories, and it collects them in one handy place. Yes, blogs aren't as popular as they once were.
DeleteAlways something, isn't it? But for sure we are used to change after this past yr.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is going to shut down more things, I think, as they aren't making money for them.
DeleteO, those bots!
ReplyDeleteI am yet to get down to this. It's still in my To-Do List that's forever getting longer and longer!
By the way, I accepted your Follow It invite, and I am getting email alerts about your new posts.
I need to check that out. By the way, there is something called Mailchimp, about which blogger Frederique had written about.
I have been following all the blogs, including yours, via Feedly. I find it quite good.
I have no idea how that all works but glad you worked it out.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy enough to do once you sit down to do it. I, of course, found a way to mess it up. Sigh.
DeleteBots are weird. I guess they must have a reason? Congrats on getting it done. Those admin type things are frustrating and usually fiddly.
ReplyDeleteCrazy times, eh?
ReplyDelete