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I'm not sure if I would agree with Markdown, depending on your audience. I'm of the opinion that trying to teach the concept of markup to ordinary people is always going to alienate some non-technical users.

I'd just suggest adding buttons for bold, italic & link. That way you can still keep it simple. I'm all for having a ruthless approach to unnecessary features.

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On the other hand, when faced with a blank text box, some more technical users will type in Markdown out of habit. Adding basic Markdown support while also having a couple buttons for bold/italics/link is an easy way to support both audiences.

I used to be on that side, but with Reddit's success and their use of Markdown I've decided that it is OK for even the non-technical audience. (Though there still should be the little "formatting help" button like they have nearby)

Reddit provides enough value for its users for them to invest the effort to learn some Markdown. This is due to Reddit's content and community being the main sources of value for the user, not it's text-formatting features. I couldn't say the same for this app. If they can't pick it up in two seconds, I think most won't bother.

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