Facebook's 'notes' section has long been neglected on the site - mostly because it's buried in a crowded drop-down menu next to a small button on your profile page.
For many people, it will be remembered as a place where people posted cringeworthy Q&As about themselves in the halcyon days of late-2000s Facebook. Over the course of a few site resdesigns, it's been pushed out of Facebook's main features.
But now it's back, and with a new, much slicker look.
Notes has been turned into something of a minimalist, Medium-style blogging platform - complete with nice, full-width images, a much wider text column, and a bigger font that sets it apart from a regular status update.
A look at what the new Notes looks like, with a post by John Biesnecker
According to Wired, Facebook is also working on new ways to tag people, link, hashtag and add images into your notes, to turn it into a richer blogging experience.
It seems an odd thing for Facebook to work on given the domination of other blogging platforms like Tumblr, Wordpress and, of course, Medium.
However, it's a small part of Facebook's larger goal of bringing people onto their site more and making them stay there. If people can read good blogs on Facebook, they're less likely to leave the site for a competitor.
The 5 most common Facebook scams:
Speaking to Wired, Alan Pelz-Sharpe, analyst at 451 Research, added that it provides Facebook with a lot more data they can mine and sell - the blog posts and essays that Facebook is hoping will start appearing on the site contain much more information than a regular status update.
There's always an ulterior motive, but since many people like to share blog posts with their Facebook friends, integrating a decent blogging platform into the site will be a welcome development for a lot of users.
