Facebook attempts to make notes less bleak

By Adam Clark Estes, Gawker Media

Facebook Notes are bleak. The blogging alternative that Mark Zuckerberg always insisted was not for blogging is a great way to read long blog-like posts from people that you used to know. And now, thanks to a facelift, Notes look less like status updates and more like, well, blog posts.

The social network is now rolling out a redesigned Notes feature that provides new formatting options as well as a more attractive template with a big pretty picture at the top of the post. You can now add and resize photos, create headers and lists, as well as impress your friends with your long form writing skills. Everyone's saying that the new format looks a lot like Medium which makes perfect sense since the same design team worked on both projects. However, you might also say the new Notes look a lot like Kinja since they both feature photos and text. (Stop copying us OK Facebook?!?!)

While Facebook started testing the new design about a month ago, Zuckerberg's engineering squad started rolling it out to everyone today. You'll probably never notice, unless you're one of the weird ones who actually uses Notes. But hey, maybe this new design will finally inspire you to blog write Notes.