Facebook redesigns Notes; will compete with other blog platforms

Facebook has redesigned its Notes section - a spot where users could post blog-style pieces of writing. The redesign looks very similar to Medium, the publishing platform by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, fastcodesign.com reported.  Like Medium, the new page consists of a single, large top image, and a single column of text. Also, Facebook has changed the default font from Arial to Georgia, which is a serif font. Serif fonts are traditionally thought to be better for reading long form content. The designers were also allowed to ditch all ads and other sidebar content. The newly designed Notes pages are being seen by a select few in their feeds now. It is not clear when the feature would be available for other users. According to Wired, Facebook is also looking at newer ways of tagging people to these posts, linking, hashtagging as well as adding images to your Notes. The idea that comes across is that Facebook wants people to stay on its site for longer time. And since many users share links to blogs which take their friends out of Facebook’s eco-system, a richer Notes would prod more users to blog on Facebook itself. With inputs from IANS