Blog with Facebook

A teammate of mine, who has never blogged, asked if Facebook (FB) could be used as a blog. Including me, three of our team replied "no". However, I thought of it again and my answer is "no... for now".

In what way Facebook can be used as a blog?

1. Of course, you can use the status as a blog post. However, it's a bit limited so you'd better use the FB notes. If you haven't finished writing your note, you can save it as a draft. You can also preview the note before publishing it.
2. You can include pictures in your note and choose the layout, that is to say the place of the picture in the text.
3. When the note is published, it is also dated.
4. People can comment your note... and "like" it.
5. Now that hastags are available on FB, you can tag your note.
6. You can also "tag" the people whom you absolutely want to read the note.
7. You can make the note unavailable to certain people.

Interesting, isn't it? There are so many common points with a "normal" blog. Nevertheless, the FB notes are not developed enough.

1. Even though you can bold, italicize and underline your text, you have no choice for its typeface. There's only one unique typeface.
2. Visitors are limited. Even though you set your FB account "public", it is only visible to FB users. On the contrary, there's no need to create an account to be able to visit blogs. Visitors save their time this way.
3. You can share the note but only on your/another FB wall or in a FB private message. That means the sharing remains on FB, while you may want to share it in a mail or in another place.
4. You can't upload videos and audios in the note.
5. You can't change the graphic. Your FB remains blue (how many people have been trapped in clicking to a suspicious link to change their account to pink?). That means you can't personalize your account.

For now, it seems that FB notes can't replace blogs. It is not even the purpose of FB as it mainly works as a social platform. However, it's worth a thought as it gives the impression that Facebook wants to be bigger and more omnipresent that it already is. It sounds like Facebook wants to be THE website where you can do everything.

Indeed, why does Facebook give you a mail address, for example something like peanut.butter.blogger@facebook.com, while you don't need to know your friend's mail address when you send a private message to them?