we need notecards for the web

Felix Salmon is right in so many ways here, but his note about some user-generated content platforms being “too beautiful” as to become intimidating/a barrier to bringing quick thoughts to the web is particularly prescient.

There’s a need for a space between the Twitter’s 140 characters and Medium’s high-design environment. Something that is essentially a mobile-friendly online text field where users can tap out quick thoughts, collect and display them publicly and share them via social media. There should be one minimal design to rule them all, no theme picking, no customizing, no effort but type and share, with a simple Twitter, Facebook, Google or email sign up and share functionality.

There are services that begin to fill this need — Postach.io, which I’ve been experimenting with and Posthaven, which resurrects the functionality of Posterous come close, but don’t get to the pure simplicity I’m imagining here. Others would argue that Facebook pages and Google+ fulfill this need. However, both also are walled gardens and don’t play well with other platforms because they’re geared toward keeping you in their space.

Tumblr arguably fulfills exactly what I need, but again it has a layer of functionality that goes beyond this concept.

It sounds crazy to say, but I don’t think there’s a truly efficient way to easily create and share text via social media. What am I missing?