Facebook updates Notes with cover photos, captions, and text formatting

Facebook is rolling out a design update for its Notes feature that offers improved formatting and lets users add a cover photo and captions. This is presumably to encourage users to compose more Notes within the social network, giving the site attributes of blogging platforms like Medium. In other words, Facebook wants to further its goal of being the place to voice your opinion.

Beyond the inclusion of a cover photo, which allows for a bit more personalization, Facebook lets you resize inserted photos and include a caption. Additionally, text can be formatted into headers, quotes, or bullet format. Altogether, these changes give Notes added flair to help them stand out from the general feed.

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This updated version of Notes is viewable across both mobile and Web, although the composition features are only available on desktop.

In August, Facebook did a major overhaul of Notes, which are aimed at giving users an attractive alternative to posting lengthy status updates. Some have said that with bigger real estate, a proper byline, and even a timestamp, Facebook Notes now have “a sense of permanence and importance.”

Today’s updates could be seen as another appeal to Facebook’s 1.49 billion monthly active users to share their thoughts on the social network. There’s quite a bit of potential for the use of Notes, especially as content could also be used for advertising purposes (a guess). Businesses already enjoy an easy presence and monetization options on the site, so the addition of a useful blogging option could be significant.

Naturally, the refreshed Notes could pose a challenge to Medium and Tumblr, and it will be interesting to see the impact of this new feature, given Facebook’s reach in comparison to other platforms.