Last month Facebook began testing a complete overhaul of notes, making it more suitable for publishing and sharing long-form content pieces.
The earliest example can be seen here, which drew immediate comparisons between Facebook Notes and Medium.
At first the new look and feel of notes was only available to a select few publishers, now the company has announced it will be rolled out throughout the entire Facebook platform.
Anyone can now create content and treat their Facebook profile as somewhat of a blogging platform. Currently the new notes can only be created on desktop, but are fully viewable on mobile.
The new look strips away much of what we expect to see in our peripheral when viewing content on someone’s profile. The focus is on the content, with the option to upload a cover photo to go with it.
Text can be formatted much the same way as a blog post — with headings, quotes, bullets, and so on. In addition to the cover photo, you can also caption and resize photos within the body content.
Facebook offers some suggestions for how to use its new notes platform:
“For instance, you can recap your summer vacation or an important time in your life to update the people you care about. You can voice your opinion on something you saw in the news or write an open letter you want to share with the world. You can share a special recipe with a bulleted list of ingredients and photos of each step.”
A new home on the web for notes can be found at Facebook.com/notes, or accessed on the mobile app via searching “notes”.
One thing that is curious about this announcement is the lack of mobile publishing. Known for being a mobile-first company, Facebook has decided to launch its new notes platform with a half-hearted approach to mobile.
While the new notes can be viewed on mobile, the ability to publish is limited to desktop. There’s a tremendous opportunity being missed by leaving out the ability to take full advantage of the new notes on the go.
It’s interesting that Facebook would launch this new overhaul without full mobile integration — perhaps the company is prepping to launch a dedicated notes app.
One way or another Facebook should be working on a way to bring the publishing of new notes to mobile.
Editorial Credit: A. and I. Kruk / Shutterstock.com
