De-siloizing Facebook in 2016
Thursday, December 31, 2015 by Dave Winer

If Facebook is going to be the #1 blogging platform, wouldn't it be nice if they added a few features to the main product. People aren't using Notes so much. They seem so formal.

  • Links.
  • Basic styling.
  • Titles.
  • An RSS feed.
  • For extra credit -- Markdown support.

Then they could not be holding back the blogosphere because people could actually use Facebook as a blogging platform. As it stands right now the stuff people post to Facebook is fairly useless outside of Facebook. 

If they'd pay a bit more attention to the world outside their boundaries, they might be better-received when they try to extend their reach into new markets. I think it's felt all around as the attitude of Facebook, it's a very silo place. 

  • I would add to your list, the ability to embed multiple instances of rich media (video, audio, etc.). Notes, for example, will let you add and format nice big photos but you can't embed a video or audio clip, only a link to the media. I suspect that the current iteration of Notes will eventually roll into the main product. It seems like the reason for the formality is because it's not yet fully baked.

    • I don't really care how the result is achieved. I just have friends who have blogs who are great writers, who gravitate to posting long stuff on Facebook that I want to get in my River of News. If they can get these people to use Notes and that gets us all these features, I'm a happy camper. (Oops sorry I'm logged on here on one of my test accounts.)