Enhancement proposal for microblogging style posts.

[wmwsagara]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

My proposal is to enhance Element to make posts Facebook/LinkedIn style.

Proposal 1 - Location of the microblogging option:
An icon next to Attachment in the Message Editor or an option under Message Editor -> More options.

Proposal 2 - Compose the post:
Once the microblogging option is selected, a pop like the current Poll with following fields:
Url: [ ]
Include url ( ) Do not Include url (x)

Image: [ ] # Optional image to override the default image from url.

[
Introductory text.

WYSIWYG view. # Auto fill from url or image.

]

Description lines: 1 +|- # Number of lines to display from the extracted url description.

[Preview] # Facility to preview before post.

Proposal 3 - Final Display:
Obviously similar to Facebook/LinkedIn style post.

Why would you like to do it?

Element is finalizing, at the time of writing, Slack-style Threads, and my this proposal is to capitalize on top of that.

Currently Element offers a way attach a file (eg. photo), but no facility to write an introductory note on top of it and post together.

Post an url is available and again no facility to write an introductory note on top of it and post together.

Messages are two types, current default style and microblogging style. Both are indeed required and serves two different purposes.

Regarding current default message style, is sufficient for normal communication (eg. family chat), reply in thread is optional, and also not even expected.

Whereas in microblogging style (eg. News channel/room), readers are required to reply in threads so that other readers can easily find replies related to a post. If not whole channel/room become a big mess.

The microblogging style message presentation also different, requires a topic, image, text on top of the image, text below the image, url, url linked to the image, a way to express emotions (Like, Love, Angry, Sad, etc), a way to comment and to see statistics of the post, all most importantly in one glance.

Facebook and LinkedIn (among others) got this right. See following images.

Facebook style:

LinkedIn style:

How would you like to achieve it?

A message editing option and a pop to fill information.

Have you considered any alternatives?

Current implementation is insufficient.

Additional context

We have normal channels/rooms as well as news channels/rooms.

Prefer to improve the experience of users who are already used to a richer experience elsewhere.