A friend of mine recently posted a note on Facebook explaining why he still chooses to keep a blog for his Facebook friends, rather than just communicate with them via notes. Beyond the most obvious explanation – Facebook is closed to non-members – he offered this as a defense:

“Facebook’s lack of a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor makes composing my blog posts much more difficult. On Blogger [Google's blogging platform], a single button makes whatever I have highlighted bold. Another button adds a link. Another inserts a picture. Facebook’s system is too complex for simple expression.”

WYSIWYG editors are commonplace on social networks. MySpace offers one for its blogs, for instance. Every common online forum package offers an editor of some sort. Why, then, doesn’t Facebook simply create one and satisfy its users?

The answer lies, perhaps, in another part of Facebook’s messaging system: its Walls. Facebook’s wall system is fairly advanced for a social network: while HTML isn’t allowed, posters can add pictures, music or videos using Facebook’s Share method, or they can attach content from any of Facebook’s applications. Despite this, Facebook strives to maintain a simplistic layout for their walls, as can be seen here:

While this message comes with a video atttached, the box itself stays relatively minimal and compact. Clicking the video attachment will open an embedded player underneath the message. The post itself can’t be modified in any way: only plain text can be added.

Here, however, is a sample post from Facebook’s Advanced Wall application, which allows for WYSIWYG posting on a separate space:

Ignoring the annoying advertisement at the bottom, this post is still a much more gaudy, excessive one than the simple wall post above. Font sizes change, colors are edited, and images are added. (Videos posted would appear without a thumbnail: the player would appear without prompting.) Is it more “expressive?” Perhaps. However, Advanced Wall posts take up much more space, and are much more eye-catching, than Wall posts are.

On a site like MySpace, which lets its users run basically amok, HTML editting like the above post might not seem out of place. Facebook, however, has built its entire service around understatement, minimalism. Users can’t change its page layout, add images – beyond photos – or really change the workings of Facebook’s default Information block system. Wall posts aren’t meant to be fun or eye-catching: they’re meant to be messages, plain and simple.

Notes are really the only self-expression any user needs: nowhere else is HTML formatting really necessary for basic communication. Writing notes, however – especially longer notes – sometimes requires slightly more complex formatting.

Notes, however, appear in users’ feeds when they are written. Allowing very easy formattion via notes would lead to possibilities of cluttered, unwieldy feeds. So, Facebook makes formatting slightly harder than the norm for notes. Rather than including a WYSIWYG for instant gratification, they merely allow formatting, and include a link to standard HTML formatting tags.

Why is this an advantage? Simple: it means that for users who really want to stylize their note, or for users who already know what they are doing, formatting isn’t hard at all. At the same time, they add a slight learning curve to formatting, so casual, inexperienced users don’t go overboard with their styling.

Sometimes, as in the case of Facebook’s notes, keeping a feature out means keeping away a lot of clutter in the meantime.