Facebook adds blog-like notes feature
A week after winning applause across the blogosphere for taking the big step of opening up its API, social networking site Facebook today launched a new feature called notes - essentially a blogging tool. — The best thing about the new notes tool …
Context & Ripple Effects
Notes lands one week after Facebook opened up its API — actually the corpus records the API opening itself drew applause across the blogosphere, and TechCrunch explicitly frames Notes as following that goodwill. The sequencing is the story: Facebook is moving from being a profile page toward being a publishing surface, and GigaOM's terse pickup ('Facebook Adds Blogs') shows the framing was read as exactly that.
First-order effects
- Facebook's members can now publish blog-style long-form posts natively, removing the need to maintain a separate blog to reach the friends already on the network.
- Independent blogging platforms lose their easiest acquisition channel — the casual writer — to a tool that comes pre-installed inside an existing social graph.
Second-order effects
- Standalone blogging services are pushed to compete on community and distribution rather than editing tools, since Facebook now bundles writing with an audience of known contacts.
- The blogosphere commentators who cheered the API opening become the same constituency judging whether Notes pulls everyday writing behind Facebook's login.
Third-order effects
- If social networks keep folding publishing formats into the feed, competition shifts from who makes the best writing tool to who owns the reader relationship — concentrating user-generated content inside closed platforms and sharpening questions about exportability and control.
The trend: Social networks are absorbing the open web's publishing formats one feature at a time, converting built-in audiences into a structural advantage over standalone blogging tools.