Tales of a Social Media Failure: Is Bloglovin’ a Thing of the Past?

Posted November 21, 2019 by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction in Let's Discuss / 88 Comments

Take a quick glance at my sidebar and you’ll see that the vast majority of my followers follow me via Bloglovin’. Of course, I’ve always known that my follower count doesn’t directly equate to active blog readers, but back in the day, I got a lot of my traffic from Bloglovin’. I always cared about that number above all other follower stats (besides email, I suppose—but I know that lots of people don’t follow via email because they don’t want their inboxes overwhelmed).

But lately, I’ve noticed that Bloglovin’ doesn’t have the same activity level that it used to. Nowadays, I don’t get many new Bloglovin’ followers, and at least three-quarters of the ones I do get are outright spam accounts (often with some sort of pervy info in their bios—no thank you!) Moreover, I’ve noticed that a lot of newer bloggers (ones who’ve started blogging in the past couple years) don’t even have links to follow via Bloglovin’ on their blogs, and when I follow them there (which I still do sometimes) I’m often one of only a handful of followers.

All of which leads me to the question… is Bloglovin’ a thing of the past? 

I’ve been blogging now for almost seven years, and sometimes it amazes me how quickly things seem to change. I do a lot of my blog-hopping via commenting back lately, but when I do want to just browse random posts, I still default to Bloglovin’. Am I the only one still using it? I notice that it’s still usually a follow option on giveaways (at least for tours), but other than that, no one seems to talk about it anymore. Or maybe I’m wrong and people are still using it but just not talking about it much? I’m just not sure.

Not too long ago, I added WordPress and Feedly follow options to the blog—those seem to be the preferred methods of following for lots of people. But maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe next year it will all be different. Who knows?

Do you still use Bloglovin’? If not, what is your preferred method of following blogs? I want to know!

 

This post has been linked up to the 2019 Book Blog Discussion Challenge.

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88 responses to “Tales of a Social Media Failure: Is Bloglovin’ a Thing of the Past?

  1. Sam@wlabb

    I never really liked using bloglovin to blog hop. I used to just get emails from all the blogs I follow. Crazy, right? Feedly has been the best. I do remember the mass exodus from Bloglovin to WordPress, because my daughter was thinking of doing the same thing, but she wasn’t happy with the free WordPress, and I wasn’t willing to pay for a self hosted blog. There is definitely a stigma to having anything to do with bloglovin, at least I see it that way, with all the “drop your WordPress links”. I predict something new will come along and WordPress will become the new Bloglovin. That’s the way of social media. I mean, look at Facebook?

  2. Jen

    I use bloglovin’ all the time. Between that, Twitter or Instagram, those are my favorite ways to follow people since I can easily access those sites through my phone, kindle fire or computer. I’m all about what’s easiest and it’s always worked well for me. But when it comes to blogs that bake or cook, those go to my email. I have no clue why, I just don’t want it mixed in with my bookish stuff, I’m weird so go figure lol.

      • Juli

        Nicole I stumbled upon your blog today because I was reading a blog that connects its tail to Bloglovin and that is how I found you. I could imagine Bloglovin still does help. At that blog I was reading they all said the same thing that at Bloglovin other people gets to find their blogs. But the other thing is that they complain of scammers. I now realise that Bloglovin does connect bloggers together. Since my blog is with a paid host I don’t want to use Bloglovin to end up getting all shithead scammers coming to follow me. But to be honest, it seems that the failed Bloglovin is still good in away since it does still help bloggers for their blog to be found. But I won’t go there to get my blog popular. Since I stopped blogging and brought down my blog for a while two years ago, after I returned to blogging again, it is so difficult to get myself going.

  3. When I started blogging in 2016, everyone recommended I get a Bloglovin’ account because “that’s the only way people find and follow you.” After 3 years, I have 112 followers on Bloglovin’, over half of which are spam accounts. I used it a bit when I first started, but I struggled with the interface to find blogs I wanted to follow. So, I never really became a user of Bloglovin’. It just never connected with me!

    • That seems to be the case with a lot of bloggers who’ve only been blogging for a few years. When I started blogging, Bloglovin’ was HUGE—everyone followed there because it was a good cross-platform way to follow blogs. I didn’t necessarily find new blogs there, but that was where I went to see everyone’s feeds in one place. I created a folder system so I could see certain blogs more prominently, but I’d also check the “regular” feed sometimes. I built up followers really fast there with some giveaways in my first year of blogging, and most of the people who followed me were other bloggers (I pretty much always followed back). But it doesn’t seem like many people have been using it to follow over the past couple of years. Guess it’s starting to fade!

  4. Bloglovin’ is what brought me to this post. I use it every morning. I have noticed that it’s not a very popular method of following. A lot of my followers on there are Russian sex bots. I wish they would ban those. It also doesn’t drive much traffic to my site. This year, almost all of my traffic has come from Twitter, Pinterest, Google, and Bing.

  5. Huh, interesting. I’ve been blogging for 15+ years, but I never used Bloglovin’. I started on Blogger, then moved to WordPress in 2006, and have been there ever since. I tend to go with what is easiest for me, though, and using the free WordPress happens to be easiest. I also have noticed Disqus being used by some people, but I have never signed up for that, either.

    • My blog is a self-hosted (in other words, paid) WordPress account, but I started out on Blogger too. Bloglovin’ is just what I use to follow other blogs. I actually really like the way it organizes posts, but I’ve gotten the impression it’s not all that popular anymore. Sounds like you’ve been around so long that you predated Bloglovin’ and never jumped on the bandwagon! 🙂

      • I remember trying the Feedly app to follow other blogs once, but that was frustrating to me. It needed a lot of updates all the time (at the time, not sure if it’s still around now or what it’s like at this point) so I gave up on it. I use the WordPress Reader to follow blogs now, mostly because then I get replies to my comments in my notifications feed in WordPress. It’s just easier, and I am lazy. 😉 There have been a lot of blogging trends over the years, though, and it’s interesting to see which ones have stuck around and which ones haven’t.

  6. I never used Bloglovin’. I’ve been around for nearly 14 years and I loved GFC for Blogger blogs. But now I follow by email, I use Twitter quite often or FB. But I keep links to all the blogs I visit on my computer via the bookmarks bar. I find that the easiest way for me to keep track of them.

    Mary Kirkland recently posted: Freebie Friday!
  7. I never took the time to figure out what Bloglovin’ was or how to use it, even though I have an account. I subscribe to accounts by email, but honestly, the way I follow blogs I know and love is to go to my own blog and check in on everyone listed in my “blogs I love” section, and the way I find new random blogs is through TTT. I came here today because I get your email alerts.

    • I used to follow tons of blogs via email, but then it got overwhelming. My inbox was always a mess (it still is, to be honest, but a little bit less of a mess?). I tried having those emails go directly into a folder and circumvent my inbox, but then I just ended up ignoring them completely. Eventually, I changed it so I only follow a few blogs via email and everything else is organized in folders in Bloglovin.

  8. I do still use bloglovin’! While I know many that prefer feedly instead, I just never hopped out of Bloglovin’ – I specially love how you can add the posts in a “folder” type thing, which used to help me a LOT when I incorpore blog posts I loved in my BuJo posts.
    It’s honestly where I like to go first in term of hopping outside of returning comments, alongside the “share posts” of the discord groups & WP reader.

    I also had a few bots follow my bloglovin’ lately aswell! ??‍♀️ nowhere we can be safe from them, eh?

  9. I remember briefly using BlogLovin’ back in the day, because that seemed what everyone was doing, but I quickly stopped using it because I preferred Google Reader and now Feedly for following blogs. I still have a BlogLovin’ button on my site. It seems WordPress is by far the most popular way to follow a blog nowadays – I think I added that option sometime last year. I feel like I only ever see people refer to how many WP followers they have. I don’t follow blogs through WordPress – just Feedly. I like how I can organize and read them there. Now I’m going to look at the other comments to see what the general consensus is 😛

    Jenna @ Falling Letters recently posted: 5 Books I Need to Re-read and Re-evaluate [Discussion]
    • I occasionally follow people via WordPress, but it’s more of a way to show my support than a way for me to actually keep track of blogs. That’s why I typically follow via Bloglovin’ too—even if I’m one of only like six people to do so for that blog! 🙂

  10. Lisa W.

    I’m kind of surprised reading this post and the comments. I use Bloglovin almost exclusively for following blogs. I love the daily email that sends me the links to new posts and I can just run through that to see what I want to read. I avoid email sign ups for the clutter factor as well. I didn’t realize that some people had such a negative impression of it. Some good food for thought…..

  11. I agree that Bloglovin’ isn’t the Big Thing it used to be. My followers on there have been pretty static over the past year or two. But I’m glad you asked the question because clearly there are still some loyal users (yay!)

    I do use Bloglovin. It’s an efficient way to check out your favorite blogs. Until someone invents a better way!

    Jen Ryland recently posted: Best Mugs for Book Lovers
  12. I stopped using Bloglovin years ago when they started inserting ads into everything. It was so annoying. And then they went to this email digest version I didn’t like either and that was the final straw for me. I use Fever RSS reader which is no longer for sale, unfortunately, to read and follow blogs. I don’t know what I’ll do if it ever stops working! I’ll have to find some RSS reader app, I suppose.

  13. So, I rarely use Bloglovin anymore myself. Although I still get emails about it occasionally. Fortunately my email follower number is catching up to my Bloglovin number. Actually my GFC follower number is highest. I know at one point it was said it was going away, but I still seem to have it and am able to follow people that way.

    Lisa Mandina (Lisa Loves Literature) recently posted: Release Blitz Review with Excerpt and Giveaway: Blindsided by Amy Daws
  14. I’ve stopped using Bloglovin, I still have it as a follow option but with all the drama that site had going down and then when your posts were on bloglovin and people were commenting on there rather than your blog I just had enough. I now use Feedly and it’s honestly so much easier for me to use. Yes, there are limitations and they obviously want me to pay for more but it’s working for me for now. I have seen on twitter and then a big push for wordpress follow trains so I imagine wordpress following is getting big but I’m not a wordpress blog so I don’t really get that.

    Becky @ A Fool's Ingenuity recently posted: Get A Life, Chloe Brown // It Was Love At First Page
    • I remember all that controversy, but I’ll confess that I didn’t feel like it really affected me all that much (my numbers didn’t go down or anything, and people weren’t commenting there as far as I could tell), so I ignored it. I just basically give people all the options now and you can follow me however you want! 🙂

  15. I’ve noticed Bloglovin seems like less of a thing these days too! That was always my default place to follow blogs, but I’ve noticed a few newer blogs without Bloglovin buttons.
    Although admittedly I don’t go on Bloglovin as often as I did, simply because I switched from an IPhone to an Android phone and there doesn’t seem to be a Bloglovin android app, which is a massive pain. So I can only use it on my IPad, which means I only look at it every few days instead of every day like I used to. I’d like to find an alternative, but have no idea what’s the best way to go!

  16. When I first started blogging nine years ago, blogger hosted blogs were way more more popular than WordPress, so I had Bloglovin so people could follow me. I’ve always preferred Feedly though and that what I would use to follow people. These days though wordpress seems to be just as popular, if not more, as blogspot so I often use the WordPress reader, though it’s clumsy.
    It was much more convenient when you could just click on the RSS feed icon and then add it to whatever feed program you used but few seems to have that option anymore.
    Most people seem to want you to follow via email but that drives me crazy and fills up my inbox way too fast.

  17. I usually use my sidebar on my blog to check out new posts from the bloggers I connect with on a regular basis. But I think Bloglovin lets non-bloggers know of new posts. I try post my stuff on Facebook and my new posts automatically post onto Twitter, too, so hopefully people see it through one of those methods. I’m still on the fence about adding and Instragram for Waves. It’s just one more thing I’ll have update if I do…

    Great post, Nicole. 🙂

    • Yeah, it’s nice that your posts automatically show up on Bloglovin’ without you doing anything. Mine get posted to Twitter for me, but the application I use isn’t able to post to Facebook anymore, so I just don’t end up posting there. I do have an Instagram account, but I’m not as active there as a lot of people are.

  18. I mean, I guess I use Bloglovin more than anything else? Though I abhor Feedly, because my blog doesn’t always show up on it for whatever reason. And WP confuses me, especially since half of my faves are on Blogger. So yeah, if I do use one, I use Bloglovin, though 9 times out of 10, I use email for my very faves, and then just visit people who visit me, and then check my blogroll every so often to be sure I don’t forget anyone ?

    Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight recently posted: Crying Laughing by Lance Rubin: Review & Giveaway!
  19. I do all of my blog hopping through Bloglovin’ and it’s the only place I follow anyone. I’ve never even tried Feedly. If I find a new blog that doesn’t have the easy follow button, I just search them out. But after seeing the comments, I’m feeling like I’m in the minority.

  20. I feel like Bloglovin’ used to be really popular and isn’t quite used as much before, but… I also feel like blog hopping isn’t quite the same as it used to be, either, with social media taking over everything. I’ve never really gotten into Bloglovin’ and always used bookmarks to visit my favorites blogs ever since I started haha.

  21. I think a lot of people either keep track manually, or subscribe via email or follow on a social media channel. The RSS feed has become less popular over the years. It might have a comeback, but social media and email keeps people more connected than ever, especially when you consider how many people would rather keep in touch via Facebook and their message system than they would actual email.

    • Oh, I definitely know what you mean. I tried following by email for a while. I even tried just sticking to my “favorite” blogs (which are a lot). But it was completely overwhelming in no time at all. So then I created a folder and had them go directly into it—but, for me, out of sight was out of mind, and I just forgot about them then! I eventually gave up and unsubscribed from 99.9% of them.

  22. I sort of hate bloglovin. I’ve never really looked at the emails or blogs which I somehow subscribed to through it. I just delete those emails so I’m not particularly fair about it. I have a love/hate relationship with the way I want to follow by email. The emails do pile up and sometimes that is a little overwhelming. But it is also easy to track if I have read and commented on the blogs I want to follow. In the same way, I get emails for comments on my own blog which I don’t delete until I have responded. I don’t have a bloglovin follow on my site, just email, Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook would be a lower demand way to follow my blog but I post more there such as book deals and promos I don’t post on the blog itself.

    Anne – Books of My Heart

    Anne recently posted: Lethal Redemption by April Hunt
  23. I still use Bloglovin. I tend to use it for browsing and then I go to the blog directly to actually read and comment on the posts.

    The shift to feedly doesn’t bother me as I’ve heard that’s pretty good but I’m still trying to work it out for myself but the shift to “follow via wordpress” is difficult for me as I’m not a WP blogger and I get excluded from that club. 🙁

    Nicci @ Sunny Buzzy Books recently posted: 9th Annual Book Bonanza!
  24. All the new blogs I see don’t use it, and that makes me sad because honestly, it’s the easiest way for me to keep up with all the blogs on different platforms. And WordPress home page just doesn’t cover it well enough, and I can’t email subscribe to everything because then my inbox gets SO clogged up. I love bloglovin and use it for all the blogs I follow, and then Feedly just for my faves. It’s such a shame but it is becoming a thing of the past and I wish it wasn’t…

    Olivia Roach recently posted: Odell’s Fall [Book Review]
  25. I visited bloglovin’ just now realizing it was nearly dead for me. Most of my followers (only a handful) are not even active anymore, lots of empty collections as proof.

    So I googled if Bloglovin’ is a thing from the past, reading your comment section and blog made me wonder if I need to put energy in bloglovin’, I reactivated my account out of curiosity.

    But I wonder if social media, in general, is on the rebound, it seems to be mastodon and mastodon-ish-like platforms that are conquering the internet now. I kind of get tired of keeping up with all the developments and shifts.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

    • I agree that lots of social media is flourishing, but Bloglovin’ has perhaps seen its day. I will continue to use it for sure, but it doesn’t seem like younger or newer bloggers are really paying much attention to it. I agree that it can be difficult to keep up with changing blogging landscapes—I’ve sort of given up on trying!

  26. I was just wondering about this and found your post. I’ve had a couple of followers on Bloglovin’ this week and it got me thinking. Just looking at them now I can see I have quite a few bots. I’ve had Feedly for reading for a year or so but didn’t think about adding it to my blog until I read your post. I’m going to try and do it now. 😀

      • Hi Nicole I know this thread is old but I found it when I was searching bloglovin issues with bots. I’ve been having so many followers with weird sexual stuff in descriptions and now I’ve been flagged by FB. I think it’s messed with my algorhythms and it’s become serious issue. Is that possible? I’m actually seeking tech help at this time. Also doesn’t it creep you out? I’m thinking of getting off bloglovin and I’ve been blogging for ten years. They offer NO support when you reach out. It’s the worst.

  27. LostCoast

    I love Bloglovin and it’s the way I read blogs. I’ve used it for @ long time. I don’t use email (too many email ads already) and don’t like Instagram (not enough info with pictures). If I can’t connect a blog to Bloglovin I skip it and move on to other sites instead. I find new blogs from Bloglovin and occasionally look up sites listed on really good blogs but I hate sites that refer you to favorites that are dead sites (obviously not really a favorite).

    • I’m glad to hear that there are still some Bloglovin’ fans out there! I agree that it’s frustrating when someone’s “favorite” sites are all defunct. I know people can’t keep those lists constantly updated, but it’s nice to see that they’re relatively up to date. (Though, I will say that I have one blog on my blogroll from a blogger who passed away, and I just haven’t been able to bring myself to remove her from my blogroll yet.)

  28. Sorry to drop by on an older post, but I am glad to have found this one!
    I used to use Bloglovin’ all the time – it was how I kept up to date with both Blogger and WordPress blogs. But I’m having such a big problem with all the spam accounts now 🙁
    I’m glad I’ve transitioned to a self-hosted WordPress blog – it would be really difficult for people to follow me with my old Blogger account otherwise!
    I haven’t really heard about Feedly to be honest, but I will have to check it out! Thanks for sharing, Nicole 🙂

  29. I’ve been blogging for 16 years this year, so I witnessed the start of Bloglovin and its golden days. I loved the platform as much as everyone at that time and have been using it still for all these years, but for the past year i have started feeling less and less confortable with the increase of spam accounts that follow me. I think that my blog followers there are now 90% these accounts. And as a IT developer myself this doesn’t give me much ease. There is why I found your post, really. After deleting like 10 e-mails from there notifying me of these spam followings, I got enough and actually searched: “is Bloglovin dead?”. Because I really am suspicius that they have no team maintaining the website at all, if they had they already had done something about this subject. Which is a real bummer since I do loved the website and followed all my blogs through it. Now I do as a lot of the other ladies above: I use Bloglovin, e-mail and Twitter, which really, is not the same. So maybe I will give Feedly a try.
    Thank you for this post, Nicole. It was a really interesting topic and the comment section was a must to read. I missed finding a blog community like this.

  30. Sorry for being late to this post, but I had to read it because Bloglovin’ has been giving me so much stress lately. I just got so fed up and quite frankly creeped out by all of the spam followers, that I tried to block them. There is absolutely no way to remove followers or even report them. So I decided to find a way to remove my blog, delete my account or at least make it private, and there is no way to do that either! I emailed them weeks ago but have yet to hear a response, and a lot of people say their customer service sucks. I just feel like once you’re on this site, you can never leave, which is kinda unsettling to me. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer lol! I get that a lot of people like it because it is an organized way to blog hop. When I started my blog years ago I felt like I needed to sign up for everything to get a lot of traffic. Now I just wish I had done some more research before singing up. It’s just not for me, and I can’t find a way to get out of it 🙁

  31. I joined earlier this year and linked my blog to my profile. It’s never worked properly. If I put the name of my blog into the search box, it doesn’t find it. I’ve contacted customer service and nobody replies. I note that the Android app is no longer available. It feels like I’ve moved in after Bloglovin have already moved out. There’s no-one home.

  32. I was entirely unfamiliar with Bloglovin’ until reading through your post here, so I guess, indirectly—the service has helped you out a bit. At least to bring me by 🙂

    I checked, and we’re actually already on there with some followers surprisingly. I guess people have gone about manually using the service.

    Personally, I just use Feedly as an RSS reader.

    But after reading through this, I’m going to go set up our account on Bloglovin’ so we have a little more control over how our site appears there.

    Thanks for the tip.

  33. As a new blogger with a 6 month old blog I’ve just come across this post when searching for an answer to the same question…and in all the blogging groups I am part of I haven’t seen Bloglovin’ mentioned once as a way to have your posts discovered. Bar Google and your newsletter though, it does pose the question as to how a reader is updated about a new post!

  34. Cerise

    I am glad I met this discussion today. I started using bloglovin 12 years ago when I joined blogspot. But two years later I went with wordpress paid host. Then I went with free wordpress, it did not work at all. I went back to wordpress paid host and it is not doing too good either and I am working hard to know where do I host my blog and my shop next. But since I left blogspot, I also left Bloglovin. Like they say, scammers are plenty at Bloglovin. We would waste our time to talk about them, we only need to be careful. It was so interesting to read all the comments about Bloglovin and I learned a lot today. But I will never go back to it again. It is definitely an old free platform, and there is no way the owner will use their own money to update it since they are not monetising Bloglovin. Good Luck to you all.

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