Following feature

Blogger announced that they have a new feature called Following that allows you to show who are following your blog as well as the blogs you are following. Your Dashboard will 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.

To adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar, log in to http://draft.blogger.com/ and go to your 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.”

Next up for Google will be the integration of Google Friend Connect. The Following feature will be rolled out to all over the next few weeks, so if you don’t see it right away, don’t worry. It’s coming soon.