I've been working on the Journal conversion to the DNN core over the past few weeks.  As part of this process, every aspect of the journal has been reviewed.  When you look at various activity feeds from other vendors(Chatter, Yammer, Jive, Facebook and LinkedIn) you come to realize that each one is slightly different when it comes to text input.   Most have consolidated functionality and I think it is time for us to do the same.  Just to be clear, I'm talking about the direct input methods for adding items to the journal, not the API.  Also, keep in mind that our main use case for the Journal is around collaboration.  This means the 140 character limitation for input is less of a concern.  

I would love to see this type of consolidation. Currently users focus on status updates, etc. It would be great to see some "intelligence" and "content awareness" in the journal itself (oh, this is a link or this is about Will Moregnwek, etc). Anything that can be done to reduce decisions on the user's part the better.

One question however...assuming that eventually we'll be able to create our own journal applications would those be something we could hook into from this concept? Perhaps something like a provider model so depending on what content gets entered in the generic status we could look for patterns and evaluate it against our own code?

e.g. "@Louisville Bicycle Club ride tonight at 6:00 on#Park City Trail"

From that I could create an event for the Louisville Bicycle Club group at 6 on the Park City Trail (stored in Property Agent)

I know this is likely out of band for the immediate future...but if you're thinking about this now it could be very useful to consider how the journal might be extended by users in the future. Something like a provider module would allow for some very nice extensions without changes to the core code (or even interface).

I like consolidation but I am not sure how stuff will then get stored and viewed later. Now files, photos, etc are accessible via profile tabs. How would that work in the future? One input source with multiple display sources? Or is a single media manager in the works? On Facebook I see Update Status, Add Photo / Video and Ask Question. If I paste a link into the Update Status it auto parses and I can add a comment. Not sure how files work in Facebook. Don't think I have ever attached a file. I guess your idea would be like the FB Add Photo but would include any permissible file types? While you are at it, I think the Ask Question might be a great addition. Will concepts like Photo Albums still exist or are 3rd party modules going to be used for photos, videos, files, etc? I know I may be mixing concepts a little between status photos and photo albums. So feel free to clarify the differences as needed.

Creating the data and displaying the data are two different tasks. The changes we will be making will not be affecting the actual data. I'm simply talking about improving the way the content is created. If I choose to attach a link, then the journal type will become link. If I choose to attach photo then the journal type will become a photo. All I'm talking about in this post is changing the user experience for creating the most common items.

@Will
How would that work using the Journal API?

Will we be able to specify what Journal Type we want to create it as?