One of the features seeing some change is Followers Authentication and Profiles. Long ago, I wrote about Community Accounts, and later about Community Profiles - both features letting you (or someone Following you) provide a blog to Follow and / or Follow other blogs.
At the time, Following (aka Google Friend Connect) was part of a complex network of different Followers services - with some Google users, and others non Google users. The ability to use non Google services, to Follow Blogger blogs, made a Blogger blog accessible to more people.
Unfortunately, using non Google services to authenticate (Accounts) and to describe (Profiles) made Following more complicated than it might be otherwise.
During the past weekend, Blogger started the process of simplifying Following. This involves removing non Google accounts and profiles from Following.
As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.
The rewrite will simplify the login options - and the login process.
The rewrite will provide a login more like Google "One account" - and make logging in, to Following, easier for all of us.
The Followers count is an immediate concern, for some of us.
Right now, I am trying to reconcile the discrepancy between January 11 (when Blogger Engineering claims we will start to see a decrease in the blog Follower count), and December 18 - 20 (when we actually did see a decrease).
The decrease, which started late Friday December 18, was not insignificant. This blog went from 5,343 to 5,104 Followers, in less than 24 hours.
If you compare the icons, you'll see that I may have actually "gained" 3 Followers - while going from 5,343 to 5,104. Presumably my own lost 242 Followers had non Google accounts - and are now unable to access this blog, using Followers.
There are half a dozen topics, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue - where some wait, in vain.
I really hope Blogger can bring back our numbers.I don't think that your numbers are coming back - and I just hope that we don't lose more. Just do not be confused about the scope of the coming changes.