Facebook Notes has been one of the sprawling social network’s least looked after features. It has sat there for years largely unloved and useless, like Facebook’s appendix, serving no purpose yet apt to explode and spill its toxic contents everywhere.
In fact, Notes are so unloved that it took both Martin and I some time to actually find them on our profiles to write test notes and discover if we’ve got some new features. Short answer: No we don’t. But…
It looks like Facebook is at least testing out new features and layouts. As Dave Winer noted, the ‘new’ Notes looks an awful lot like Medium, the blogging platform that’s popular with tech folk and hipsters across the Web.
Facebook "notes" have a new Medium-like appearance. (See comments on this note.) https://t.co/e8QQwWEXeN
— Dave Winer (@davewiner) August 17, 2015
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With Facebook spending a lot of time and money on video, the ‘Instant Stories’ program and live streaming, it makes sense that it would put more effort into enabling individual users to publish longer contributions. Fixing Notes could do that.
Would you blog on Facebook? And do you still bother with Notes right now?
Facebook has promised to get back to me. I’ll update this post when it does.
Update: A Facebook spokesperson confirms that a test is going on: “We’re testing an update to Notes to make it easier for people to create and read longer-form stories on Facebook.” I understand that it involves a small number of users, with features including cover photos, user tagging, photo resizing, adding links and hashtags. You’ll be able to share notes with the audience of your choice, as you can with normal posts right now.
No specific news on when this might roll out to a wider audience, but we’ll be watching closely! And as Arjun Tuli notes in the comments:
This is probably because Teehan Lax (the chief designers of the initial version of Medium (http://www.teehanlax.com/story/medium/) joined Facebook recently (http://www.teehanlax.com/story/our-next-act/)
➤ Facebook ‘new’ Notes look [Facebook via Dave Winer]
Read next: How can Facebook bring its live streaming feature to the masses? Messenger
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