
The massive social media network is finally making an update to this feature that has long been ignored.
Users of Facebook are about to see some significant changes to how the social network uses one particular feature.
Facebook is finally making over “Notes,” one feature you probably don’t even know much about, and the company is looking to change that.
Notes allows you to write a long post in a nice format, and its initial redesign was apparently met with some success. Now, those changes will be official, Facebook announced on Friday according to a Mashable report.
Everyone now has the ability to use the refreshed version of Notes, a feature that had been ignored for years by Facebook, with its last significant update happening five years ago.
But Facebook has turned its attention to other aspects of its site, including publishing features for media outlets. As a result, it needed to expand on its offerings, and Notes was one way to do that.
Facebook currently has about 1.25 billion users, and the company has realized it needs to show a wider range of features beyond merely posting short status updates and “liking” posts. So, the social network is trying to create a place where people can post their own blog posts.
Notes is fairly no-frills at this point, but the new update does bring some customization options for users. You can now get access to some basic formatting tools, and use block quotes and numbered lists, as well as the ability to add cover images on a note. You’ll also be able to use keyboard shortcuts to italicize or bold text.
The redesign makes these features much more easy to use, and it will include new fonts and a better layout, making it look less like a regular Facebook update and more like a blog post.
In fact, Mashable compared the new look to that of Medium, which is a blogging startup created by the cofounder of Twitter.
All of this is indicative of a major shift for Facebook. The new design makes Notes a lot cleaner, and does away with a sidebar containing suggestions and ads. The changes were initially tested with a small group of users before the full redesign was made official.
In recent months, Facebook has also introduced the Instant Articles platform, as well as live video streaming and an embeddable video player, according to the report.
Facebook certainly has come a long way since its founding back in February 2004, more than 11 years ago. It now boasts 1.25 billion users, a significant portion of the entire globe.
The online social networking service is headquartered in Menlo Park in California. Mark Zuckerberg, its founder, went to Harvard College and founded it along with his roommates and follow students. The membership was initially limited to just Harvard students but was later expanded to the rest of the Boston area, as well as the Ivy League and Stanford University. As its popularity grew, it began to be supported at other universities and later for high schools, and by 2006, you could get a Facebook account if you were at least 13 years old.
The site allows people to create a user profile, add others as friends, post status updates, add photos and videos, and view the status updates of their friends, allowing people to keep in touch and message each other, and just generally see what’s going on in the lives of people they are connected to. The site blew up in popularity in the 2000s as it expanded outside college campuses and into the general public, and today the company has annual revenues of $12.5 billion, and $40 billion in total assets. It has numerous popular subsidiaries, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR, and Private Core. It is the No. 2 ranking website on Alexa.
Facebook, meanwhile, has been quite busy elsewhere, partnering with the UN to bring Internet access to refugee camps. The social networking giant has been lobbying the United Nations, arguing that Internet access is a fundamental human right, according to a CNET report.
The movement would seek to enable refugees from the Syrian civil war to access the Internet in order to more effectively communicate as they seek to resettle elsewhere.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a speech to the UN today claiming that Internet connections in refugee camps would help refugees get support and aid, as well as provide them with a link to loved ones during this difficult time. Zuckerberg said that allowing them access would increase their quality of life, and could even lift them out of poverty. He said the Internet is a “key driver of social and economic progress in our time,” according to the report.
It’s the latest attempt by Facebook and other tech companies to attempt to expand connectivity to areas of the world that have not had such access. The movement could help billions of people take advantage of their services, and could help fulfill the stated goals of both Facebook and Google: the former being to connect everyone, and the latter to organize all the information in the world.
As part of that, Facebook has been constructing satellites and aircraft that could make Internet connections possible in remote areas of the world, and Google has been doing the same with high-altitude balloons.
However, these efforts have more than their fair share of skeptics, who say that these companies are really trying to make a tidy profit by making money through advertising, as well as monopolizing Internet access in these areas.
Internet.org, a nonprofit spearheaded by Facebook, has gotten all sorts of complaints for its efforts to work with governments and telecommunications companies to offer free limited Internet access to those in developing countries. Many argue this would violate net neutrality, the concept that all sites and services should be equally accessible, according to the report.
However, Zuckerberg has pushed forward with these efforts, arguing that for every 10 people who get access to the Internet, one individual is lifted out of poverty. He argues that 140 million new joys can be created by expanding Internet access.
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