by It’s kind of amusing to see the verbal gymnastics Facebook goes through to not use the word “blog” in their news about an update to the Notes feature that allows for long-form posts. But that’s what they are. Everyone is comparing this to Medium and there are certainly similarities, particularly in how this looks and feels. But I feel that’s not entirely accurate and that the comparison is being made because the very media commentators who are weighing in on Notes are among Medium’s biggest users, so it’s on their mind.
Medium, for all of the talk about its ease of use, is not very new user friendly. It’s difficult to figure out how to tap into the network that is among its key features and that figuring out where your profile actually is is difficult as well. If you go to Medium.com it’s hard to know where to start. And there’s no evidence that it’s caught on at all with the demographic that Facebook is actually keen on attracting or retaining.
Instead I think they’re actually going after sites like Tumblr and Squarespace that have positioned themselves as cool places to hang out and engage in something that’s a mix of social networking and blogging. Facebook wants to own that space between the normal status update and a full blog solution like WordPress. As I said to a colleague, if Instant Articles is Facebook wanting to own media stories on its network, Notes is it wanting to get people to share their Holiday Letters there instead of emailing it to family and friends.
Just because Facebook has built it, though, doesn’t mean people will flock to it. The process of creating long-form posts is much different than just posting a quick status update with a picture and changing user behavior to favor – or at least consider from time to time – the former will be a substantial undertaking for Facebook. That’s especially true considering how much activity both on Facebook specifically and the entire rest of the internet happens on mobile. It’s hard to see people pounding out a 500-1,500 word post…sorry, “Note”… on their phone. If someone is inclined to that behavior it’s likely they’re already using Tumblr or WordPress and don’t need to branch out into another platform, especially if there’s no additional value proposition for them to do so like there is on LinkedIn.
Facebook certainly has an uphill battle in front of it to get Notes adopted by a critical mass. Look for them to offer incentives like preferred treatment in the Newsfeed to get people on board. For the time being, though, this appears to be them playing catch-up in a field that has pretty much reached saturation.
