Facebook experiment suggests it’s going after Medium

It’s hardly surprising that Facebook might want to gain the same sort of reputation, especially with its earlier focus on embedding content directly into the newsfeed with things like Instant Articles launched earlier this year. Services such as Blogger and WordPress are ever popular, and Facebook feels they could offer a similar, if not better service. As spotted by developer Dave Winer, Facebook seems to be revamping its old Notes feature into what looks like its own take on the blogging / publishing platform Medium. Facebook has been exploring options to allow for longer-form content on their platform, as the Facebook wall and timeline will only show a portion of longer posts right now.

The company faces competition from Medium when it comes to attracting thought leaders to its content platform. Now it looks like Notes could be getting a total redesign to compete with a new generation of blogging websites. Facebook has over 1.5 billion users around the world, most of which have not even heard of Bitcoin in a proper manner just yet.

The success of this platform largely depends on how it will be marketed and made available.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Next Web that the new Notes were part of a test involving a small number of users, but that the published notes are visible to anyone.

As with other elements of Facebook, you can choose to share notes with the public, your friends, just yourself, or a custom roster.

Until now it has been a very basic blogging tool and most people aren’t aware that it is there.