In future, perhaps you could survey WordPress bloggers beforehand (via wordpress.com news), rather than making changes without notice?

Thank you. I am much happier now.

The only bit of confusion is that it wants me to enter an email address although I am logged into my wordpress account. I thought it would just display the button? As long as the logic is not inverted I do not mind.

Thank you again.

PEOPLE POWER - thank you WP for restoring the functionality we loved!

Yes! And THIS is why WordPress users love you guys.

You LISTEN to your readers, instead of Facebook that shoves changes down people's throat. (Facebook constantly has me wondering whether I shouldn't just leave it, I've done it many times actually.)

WordPress has never made me feel that way. WordPress always made me feel smug because you guys always do great stuff.

Please continue to listen to your users and I guarantee we'll never leave.

This is a waste of space and could be confusing, you should reconsider.

And, like I said, I think most people will come around on the "follow" concept if it's done right.

I know I will.

We'll continue to look into ways to display the follow button, but with better display and management options for you as a user.

Count another unhappy and irritated user. Without warning a satisfactory widget was exchanged for another that has a confusingly labeled button with color and style out of place with the rest of the theme used, and which can not be configured adequately.

I would be happiest if the change were simply reverted.

Also, as I said in my last post, I'm at all not opposed to the migration towards making the "follow" terminology standard across the varying methods of "following" available: e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, RSS, email, etc.

The problem that most everyone is complaining about, I believe, has to do with the manner in which this migration has been initiated and implemented.

The conversion of the email subscription widget to a Follow widget is a terrible solution, especially from a PR standpoint. If you want to migrate users toward the "follow" concept, you have to do it elegantly. Instead, WordPress has people pissed off and hating the whole "follow" concept, sabotaging their very efforts towards that goal.

Again, change the widget so that it expands and offers users the option to select how they want to follow the blog from all the available options, or offer a page template that provides the same interface. Then, I would also suggest restoring the old Email Subscription widget so that others can opt to continue using that very effective tool.

Thanks again

We do understand you are just trying to improve the service but we do become very protective of our blogs . Thanks for having the balls to change your mind .

I'm sending them step by step what to do on registering for a username only, but it's all trying their patience and they are not getting email of my new posts. (I've looked through my settings so much and can't figure a way to enable it anymore ) Any suggestions?

Everyone agrees that it's confusing readers, preventing new subscriptions because the words "email" and "subscription" are gone.

I'd like to stress that I actually don't mind the concept of moving towards using the term "follow" to include everything from Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites, RSS, and, yes, email subscriptions. (This is why, as a short term solution, I've added instructions to subscribe by email via the comments interface to my Follow page.)

But, most people aren't quite there yet.

It seems to me that a great solution would be a widget that expands to offer all of these ways to follow a blog all in one convenient place. Or, it could be a page template, similar to the Follow page that I created, where all the different options for following a blog, yes, including email subscription, are available.

In any case, having a live widget modified to the dislike of so many people, is a bad policy. Your strategy doesn't even conform to rapid development, or standard change processes. Although it isn't a big change in a grand scheme of things, but many bloggers take email subscription of their audience very seriously. The term Follow just doesn't fit. You should let the bloggers choose their own term for the button and you should let the bloggers choose how they want this button to look according to their themes

If you guys don't like it, too bad. We at WordPress think it's cool and we're not gonna change it back.

After reading some of the above comments feel even more wary now. I have no real idea if my readers are affected by the changes. I do know that one reader felt the need to resubscribe to my blog.

People were happy with the way it was befre, could you not just change it back?

But I think the complaint is that readers do not know that "follow" means "subscribe." They are confusing the word "follow" with Twitter. They don't realize it means "subscribe." Why? Because it doesn't say "subscribe." It says "follow." Which to most people does not mean the same thing.

And some people don't use twitter and don't want to. What we are trying to say is that the change of wording that is confusing.

And that subscribers don't equal followers. In the minds of most people (scratch that: all people) they are different. The definition of each word is different.

What we are complaining about is not the simplicity of function, it's the word: "follow."

Just change "follow" to "subscribe" and we'll love you forever, we promise.

And if you must have the word "follow" you're going to have to explain that to the vast majority of people who do not get it. Or else its kinda creepy to just change the definition of a word for no reason.