Elon Musk's resuscitated Twitter Notes feature sure sounds a lot like something Facebook did in 2006

• For the past few months Twitter has been testing a new feature that lets people post longer articles.
• Elon Musk seems excited about it, recently tweeting about its potential.

Elon Musk is really excited about a new Twitter feature that means people can publish articles (or even entire books, he said) on the app.

Originally called Twitter Notes, and now called Articles, it's currently being tested among a small group of users, according to Twitter's website.

It seems it will work by creating a "Notes card" which will have a unique URL that you can then add to your tweet just like any other link, so people can click on it and read your note (or entire book, if that's your prerogative) on Twitter.

Musk has said his goal is to stop losing money. While things like Twitter Blue (aka "paying to look verified") and paying users to post don't look set to work, at least they felt semi-current — YouTube for example also has a premium version you can pay for, and also shares ad revenue with creators.

Not the case with Notes.

Musk may not remember this (I don't think that many people do) but Facebook also had a feature called Notes. It was also a place you could write long articles you could then link to from other posts, and you could also probably technically publish a whole book on it, although I'd be very surprised if anyone ever did.

Facebook Notes was introduced in 2006. Basically, it was the exact same thing as Twitter Notes, but 17 years earlier.

It wasn't hugely popular and not because it was ahead of its time — there were many many platforms back then that supported long-form writing. So many that long-form writing was the default internet content, which is why tweeting was called "micro-blogging."

Now, long-form writing is mostly found on Medium or Substack, and various other platforms that offered similar features have shut down — including Facebook Notes, which was discontinued in 2020.

All in all, it doesn't seem like the opportune time to roll out a long-form writing feature. But given how petty this billionaires' feud has become, I wouldn't put it past Mark Zuckerberg to bring Facebook Notes back just to spite Musk. Battle of the Notes-no-one-wanted here we come.