A little perspective on the urgency at Evernote

[tavor 668]

Google Trends for the search term "evernote":

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&geo=US&q=evernote

If you were a VC investor in a tech startup that is over 10yrs old, and has this kind of search trend result (down 80% in 5 years), how comfortable would you feel? Would you want a management team that focuses on keeping the power users happy, or would you want one that attempts to put the company on a path to growth in users (which translates to a higher valuation in a prospective IPO or sale)?

Once you understand what the company owners are thinking, you will have a much better understanding of the decisions made by management. Trying to understand management decisions from the perspective of what is best for power users will only leave you scratching your head.

[gazumped 11,652]

Stats used to be my thing (insurance underwriter) and the one thing I learned was;  never take one indicator in isolation.  That trend downwards forinstance might be because the marketing got better - people were being led to the website directly rather than have to search for it...

[aukirk 367]

This is really interesting... I certainly hope they can pull it off.  For a lot of power users, they are distraught and upset (justifiably) that there trusted system and workflow has been irreparably disrupted.  However, I suspect your indication is correct... that they have determined that the power users are not their path to maintaining a strong/independent company.  Especially when a good portion of the power user base may be prone to jump ship to the latest competing start up (Notion, Roam... or whatever the next new thing is). 

At least for myself, I am optimistic (and hopeful) that they can get a few things with this new release fixed and start building the features that will appeal to a larger base of users and keep my trusted system in business for years to come.  I guess I would rather have a crippled Evernote than no Evernote... (and other than moving to another solution, I don't really have any other option than to stay optimistic.)

[tavor 668]

33 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Stats used to be my thing (insurance underwriter) and the one thing I learned was;  never take one indicator in isolation.  That trend downwards forinstance might be because the marketing got better - people were being led to the website directly rather than have to search for it...

On a related note, do you think power users evangelizing for EN has increased on decreased in recent years? Years ago, I was evangelizing to close family and friends. A few years ago, after a continued pattern of releases with poor QA that broke user workflows, I could no longer in good conscience recommend the product even though I use it every day.

Perhaps a comparison would shed some light on your point. Here are search trends for Evernote and OneNote over the last 10 years:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-12-13 2020-12-13&geo=US&q=evernote,onenote

From my perspective, those trends line up with what I experienced. OneNote has been around forever, but never generated much excitement. It's been Steady Eddie, and with Office365 including it for free, it continues to soldier on. Evernote was a rocketship by comparison, and that trend peak in the first half of the 2010s corresponds to a time when there were so many people evangelizing for EN, a time when Evernote not only lapped OneNote, but defined the space, even though it came years after OneNote.

It's harder to do a good trend search for some of the other players in the note taking space because many of the names are not unique to the software - e.g., bear, joplin, nimbus, etc., and so you have trend results showing popularity even before these apps were launched.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, aukirk said:

Especially when a good portion of the power user base may be prone to jump ship to the latest competing start up (Notion, Roam... or whatever the next new thing is). 

Not likely for a power user.  Too much time invested in developing a workflow.  If you have a paperless use case as I do none of the shiny objects can do as well as what the older versions of EN can.  In my most recent analysis anyway.  Some of the stripped function is what made EN special, even considering the sophomoric testing and roll out processes of the last ten years.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, tavor said:

Once you understand what the company owners are thinking, you will have a much better understanding of the decisions made by management. Trying to understand management decisions from the perspective of what is best for power users will only leave you scratching your head.

I guess I'm scratching my head more on the we don't plan statement in one of the post V10 interviews.  Hard to isolate that thinking to one bit of a business.  

[stocky2605 401]

I‘m a Evernote Poweruser* - therefore no alternative available 🙂

*) per Ian Smalls defintion

[gazumped 11,652]

16 minutes ago, CalS said:

scratching my head more on the we don't plan statement

I guess it's possible to relate that to 'Agile' product development - you react to any issues that come up rather than having some sort of grand strategy for taking over the world (that often tends not to play out well for the planners...).  But being purely reactive is also not a good idea because you end up with a product so covered in duck tape and glued-on extensions that to do more you eventually have to strip off all the additions and start over from scratch (sound familiar to anyone?) plus that 'camel = horse by committee' thing is still sadly true.

I like the former uncle Phil's comment recently that Evernote in its early days 'didn't listen to customers' they just used the app(s) and became their own power users.  They  fixed what irked them,  and added on stuff that seemed like a good idea - and that was enough to get them started.  I wish that approach had continued.  Customers could comment,  point out glitches and suggest additions,  but as 'proper' power users,  the Evernote team should have had an overview of the type of app they would want and could use - and that would work well within the resources that they had available.

Ian's recent comments about planning and 'tags being used by a minority' (or whatever) lead me to suspect that he's not a big user,  and that the management are currently more interested in generating more revenue than looking after the power user few.  Also that he's not above using BS stats to support his points...

Time (as they say) will tell...

[CalS 5,280]

18 minutes ago, gazumped said:

I guess it's possible to relate that to 'Agile' product development - you react to any issues that come up rather than having some sort of grand strategy for taking over the world (that often tends not to play out well for the planners...).

For sure.  Though you still need a target of some sort to agile towards.  That be my question.  What work went into determining the initial feature set of V10.  To your point based upon how much personal bias versus history and facts?  Maybe the market just wants a dumbed down "note" app. 

I agree the tags comment was bewildering after ten years of EN saying either explicitly or implicitly that tags were the organization vehicle.  Plus I don't know that you could use EN extensively and make some of the recent UI changes which have added so many clicks.  You can make an app easier to use without kneecapping it.

[eric99 978]

1 hour ago, tavor said:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-12-13 2020-12-13&geo=US&q=evernote,onenote

 

This proves nothing, why are people searching for a specific term? Maybe oneNote is so complicated that users need to search more than for evernote, which is much more intuitive?

[John in Michigan USA 129]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Stats used to be my thing (insurance underwriter) and the one thing I learned was;  never take one indicator in isolation.  That trend downwards forinstance might be because the marketing got better - people were being led to the website directly rather than have to search for it...

You make a very important point. Stats plus high domain knowledge is a powerful tool. Stats plus low domain knowledge is often worse than no stats at all, because of the danger of conclusions that appear to have empirical support but which turn out to be data artifacts. The marketing may have changed. People use search differently now than in 2016. Google has certain changed their algorithm...in a graph such as the OP's, does Google adjust their "interest over time" metric so that interest as measured under the algorithm from 4 years ago is apples-to-apples comparable with interest as measured today? If they do, they probably don't give access to that metric for free!

Having said all that, the OP's graph is consistent with my experience about the popularity of Evernote.

[ObviousBob 140]

That graph is pretty interesting, even if others are right that it isn't definitive. Its also curious that there isn't a recent bump in interest with the new releases (or maybe the graph doesn't go out far enough..). Another thing I've noticed but can't really quantify is that there is a definite lack of interest from the tech press.. back in the day, a new Evernote would be big news, with lots of reviews. Haven't seen the same thing this time around.

[tavor 668]

3 hours ago, eric99 said:

This proves nothing, why are people searching for a specific term? Maybe oneNote is so complicated that users need to search more than for evernote, which is much more intuitive?

Of course the Google trends result doesn't PROVE anything. But it is suggestive, especially when it comports with our own experiences and doesn't seem from far out left field.

1 hour ago, John in Michigan USA said:

Having said all that, the OP's graph is consistent with my experience about the popularity of Evernote.

Exactly. Mine too. I'd guess many of the longtime users would not be surprised by the shape of the graph - but if people think the shape of the graph is a total shocker and out of line with their own experience, please let me know! 

As for Google changing their metrics or people using search differently, those are for sure true. That's why I included the comparison chart showing both EN and ON over 10 years. 

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

4 hours ago, tavor said:

On a related note, do you think power users evangelizing for EN has increased on decreased in recent years? Years ago, I was evangelizing to close family and friends. A few years ago, after a continued pattern of releases with poor QA that broke user workflows, I could no longer in good conscience recommend the product even though I use it every day.

Perhaps a comparison would shed some light on your point. Here are search trends for Evernote and OneNote over the last 10 years:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-12-13 2020-12-13&geo=US&q=evernote,onenote

From my perspective, those trends line up with what I experienced. OneNote has been around forever, but never generated much excitement. It's been Steady Eddie, and with Office365 including it for free, it continues to soldier on. Evernote was a rocketship by comparison, and that trend peak in the first half of the 2010s corresponds to a time when there were so many people evangelizing for EN, a time when Evernote not only lapped OneNote, but defined the space, even though it came years after OneNote.

It's harder to do a good trend search for some of the other players in the note taking space because many of the names are not unique to the software - e.g., bear, joplin, nimbus, etc., and so you have trend results showing popularity even before these apps were launched.

MS never really marketed Onenote. Even for the past few years, as they poured more attention into the service, especially the mobile side of things and the abortive W10 app, they’ve been doing a piss poor job promoting it. And before that, tens of millions of people had it preinstalled on their work and business computers along with the rest of Office, and had zero idea of what it was or what to use it for (or even that they had it). MS had really dropped the ball there. 

[tavor 668]

8 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

MS never really marketed Onenote. Even for the past few years, as they poured more attention into the service, especially the mobile side of things and the abortive W10 app, they’ve been doing a piss poor job promoting it. And before that, tens of millions of people had it preinstalled on their work and business computers along with the rest of Office, and had zero idea of what it was or what to use it for (or even that they had it). MS had really dropped the ball there. 

I don't think even Microsoft was clear on this in their own minds! I think it took Evernote to come along and really define what a note taking app is, the rationale for using one, etc. And then Microsoft was like - "hey, we already have something that does this". But even then, I don't think they appreciated the potential - or maybe they decided it would just be a minor player compared to their heavy hitters and deployed marketing resources accordingly. They have the luxury of slow playing this because even if OneNote dies tomorrow, it doesn't affect their bottom line. And their user numbers don't really suffer from lack of big marketing push because everyone on Office 365 has it, and students get it for free, etc. They are in the enviable position of just trying to hit singles, knowing there will always be more turns at bat, while most of the competitors are swinging for the fences because they live or die based on this one product. 

We see somewhat similar behavior by Google. Keep has been around a very long time, in note taking app years, and they've really slow played that product. But they can step on the accelerator anytime they want. And if they neglect it, they still have the option of focusing on it next year or the year after that . . . 

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

2 hours ago, tavor said:

I don't think even Microsoft was clear on this in their own minds! I think it took Evernote to come along and really define what a note taking app is, the rationale for using one, etc. And then Microsoft was like - "hey, we already have something that does this". But even then, I don't think they appreciated the potential - or maybe they decided it would just be a minor player compared to their heavy hitters and deployed marketing resources accordingly. They have the luxury of slow playing this because even if OneNote dies tomorrow, it doesn't affect their bottom line. And their user numbers don't really suffer from lack of big marketing push because everyone on Office 365 has it, and students get it for free, etc. They are in the enviable position of just trying to hit singles, knowing there will always be more turns at bat, while most of the competitors are swinging for the fences because they live or die based on this one product. 

We see somewhat similar behavior by Google. Keep has been around a very long time, in note taking app years, and they've really slow played that product. But they can step on the accelerator anytime they want. And if they neglect it, they still have the option of focusing on it next year or the year after that . . . 

MS' problem is that it's a very squarely business oriented company, which has no idea how to market to consumers, doesn't really care for the consumer market, and is losing because of this big time, over and over again. Just look at them having a full featured, modern mobile OS years before Google and Apple, yet doing nothing about it for years until it was too late.

[Vidalia 23]

I think the EN graph went downward when they announced 2 device limit. 😀

[RacingGoat 22]

On 12/13/2020 at 5:14 PM, tavor said:

I don't think even Microsoft was clear on this in their own minds! I think it took Evernote to come along and really define what a note taking app is, the rationale for using one, etc. And then Microsoft was like - "hey, we already have something that does this". But even then, I don't think they appreciated the potential - or maybe they decided it would just be a minor player compared to their heavy hitters and deployed marketing resources accordingly. They have the luxury of slow playing this because even if OneNote dies tomorrow, it doesn't affect their bottom line. And their user numbers don't really suffer from lack of big marketing push because everyone on Office 365 has it, and students get it for free, etc. They are in the enviable position of just trying to hit singles, knowing there will always be more turns at bat, while most of the competitors are swinging for the fences because they live or die based on this one product. 

We see somewhat similar behavior by Google. Keep has been around a very long time, in note taking app years, and they've really slow played that product. But they can step on the accelerator anytime they want. And if they neglect it, they still have the option of focusing on it next year or the year after that . . . 

You are exactly right on both counts... I remember when Microsoft released the very first version of OneNote. While they obviously knew what it was, they completely failed at explaining to us why we needed/wanted it. As such, not many of us did. I evaluated it and was pretty much "meh...".

It was until Evernote came along that I really saw the potential for these applications.

And your last point about how Microsoft would experience minimal impact if OneNote simply disappeared is exactly why I would never go all-in with OneNote. It's been around so long that I doubt it will go anywhere soon, but there's no guarantee the next CEO or product manager hired doesn't decide otherwise.

Evernote can't live without Evernote, so as long as they don't run the business into bankruptcy, I feel my data is safe.

[aukirk 367]

38 minutes ago, RacingGoat said:

And your last point about how Microsoft would experience minimal impact if OneNote simply disappeared is exactly why I would never go all-in with OneNote. It's been around so long that I doubt it will go anywhere soon, but there's no guarantee the next CEO or product manager hired doesn't decide otherwise.

Evernote can't live without Evernote, so as long as they don't run the business into bankruptcy, I feel my data is safe.

I think that OneNote is a bigger part of the Microsoft gameplan than we are probably giving it credit for.  Together with Teams, One Note is a big part of their push into the class room and attempt to counter the Google Docs/Sheets/Gmail, etc. push to become the go-to application suite for students (which would pose a serious risk to the long-term dominance of MS Word if a new generation of users grow up using only the Google products.

I know my son's school recently switched to Microsoft products and Teams and One Note are a big part of their workflow... especially with hybrid in-class and distance learning.