Social media is delicious. Consumers have an insatiable appetite when it comes to gobbling up the tasty morsels that are served on their news feed. They can’t get enough. A recent survey from Forrester found that most people only use about five different apps on their smartphones, and of those, the Facebook app is usually number one in time used.

Facebook Inc. gets about 13 percent of our total phone usage time. We pull it up, check our news feeds, and snack away. There are so many different flavors! Some of the posts are sweet, and some of them are sour, but what they have in common is that they’re mostly bite sized. You might scroll past an interesting quote one moment, and then a short, “Which cartoon character are you?” quiz the next.

It’s fast and easy to jump on and get your social media fix. That seems to be what the people want, since they’re using Facebook more than any other app. Is 13 percent enough, though? Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, isn’t one to leave anything on the table. Those Facebook snackable posts are great, but like *Jesus said, “Man cannot live on snacks alone…” Sometimes people have cravings that aren’t satisfied with a simple post. When social media users want to read or write something more significant than a quick status update, they often leave the Facebook website to do so. That may no longer be necessary. Facebook just released an updated version of Notes. When bite sized posts just won’t cut it, you can now find full course meals on Facebook Notes.

Facebook added its “My Notes” feature all the way back in 2006, when MySpace was still the big dog in social media. It was designed to appeal to bloggers, and even allowed users to import their blogs from other platforms. It was a relatively simple affair, allowing users to add a note title, upload an image, and then fill in the body with whatever was on your mind. I remember reading quite a few interesting notes, back in the day.

New Notes

Over the years, both Facebook users and Facebook employees seemed to lose interest in Notes. While the Facebook News Feed evolved into what it is today, Notes wasn’t evolving at all. The product wasn’t getting updated. Perhaps the success of companies like Medium (A Medium Corporation) convinced Facebook executives that a long-form content platform could be valuable, after all.

The new, upgraded Notes offers more customization options. Users can upload cover photos for each note, and photos within the Note’s body can be resized and captioned. The Note text can now be formatted into headers, quotes, or bullets. When you have something to say that needs to be longer than a quick status update, Notes is a useful tool for expressing yourself. At the moment, Notes can only be created on the Facebook website, but they’re viewable both on the web and on mobile devices.

Facebook videos have a huge advantage over YouTube videos when shared on the platform, due in large part to the way they automatically play within the Facebook app. Facebook Notes could get similar preferential news feed treatment to help it overtake competing platforms, like Medium, Svbtle, and Exposure. If Notes gains the ability to play embedded Facebook videos, that could definitely tip the scales in its favor. An even better option would see Notes evolve into a platform that allowed everyday users to create interactive, Facebook Instant Articles. For now, we’ll have to wait and see if this product resurrection catches on, or if it fades away for the second time.

*Bread is a type of snack, so the Jesus quote is technically accurate.

Photo Credit: Winston Edmondson