Google’s Blogger has launched a new feature called “follow by email”. The feature is pretty self-explanatory really. It lets users follow blogs via email. It’s a great idea that should’ve been implemented years ago.

“Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog,” says Blogger Software Engineer Ben Eitzen. “Our team is always thinking of new ways to connect users with the freshest content across Blogger, and today we’re happy to offer a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email.”

In case you needed more proof that email is alive and well (as opposed to being killed by social media) this seems like a pretty good piece of evidence (unless you’re one of those who thinks social media is killing blogs too).

“The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox,” explains Eitzen. “When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.”

Blogger bloggers can simply add the gadget using the “add a gadget” link from the Design | Page Elements tab, then select “follow by email”. Readers will then be able to subscribe to your blog, when they see the image above.

As an added bonus, the gadget also utilizes Googl’s Feedburner to track subscriber numbers and daily views. These stats can be seen from Feedburner.com.