This, That and the Other Thing

There's a chance you haven't noticed but I've remodeled my sidebars a little bit. It's a subtle change. Basically I've trimmed down the left side, gotten rid of some widgets and images and links. Starting with my first review of 2012 I'm going to post the author's website within the review itself instead of just keeping a running list of them. That was starting to get cumbersome. And I rearranged some of the modules, moved my 'currently gnawing on' image to the left, along with the Twitter updater. That then moved my 'wanna bite' module up and I updated that one. Kinda helps to let people know I'm not taking on new titles at the moment right up front instead of promoting that I do and getting emails. Duh. Other than that, I think it's pretty streamlined as it is. I really don't have much going on here except for the images directly related to the theme itself. Pretty good, I think.

Now, I've been reading that Google will soon disconnect Google Friend Connect for non-Blogger users, replacing it with Google+. So this kind of shoots the shit right down the toilet with my follower requirement for my giveaways. Of course, in the vein of fairness, I now open up my giveaways to followers of different varieties. I'm on a small handful of social networking sites (simply because I can't be bothered with more) so henceforth, you can be a follower via the following options to be eligible for my giveaways -

Twitter. I'm not crazy active on it compared to a lot of people but I am on there. Usually when I'm super bored at work and I start conversations with random people as I read through my homepage. But I crosspost blog post links there so it's one good way to follow me.

Feed reader. This is the way I follow a lot of my fellow bloggers and it helps because it's one of the few avenues I have left that are still open to being read while at work.

The always wonderful Goodreads. I crosspost all of my reviews here, along with my reading updates and all of that. Just, for the love of god, if you add me don't spam the shit out of me with your event requests. It won't work. In fact, it'll get you unfriended. God, those things are annoying.

And, of course, Facebook. This isn't my personal Facebook page. Oh no. That one's nice and private. This is the fan page I set up for Bites. Like Twitter, I use it to crosspost my blog links and I have some extra pictures there and stuff. I put up my giveaways there as well so people know about them.

So now you have options. When I post the form for my giveaways in the future, you'll just need to write down the method that you use to follow me. Of course you can still follow via Google Friend Connect but in reality I'm not sure how much longer that's going to be relevant once it gets restricted. But we'll see.

I'll also be updating my sidebar with these lovely icons for easy access. Just watch for them where my Twitter update widget is now.