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Evernote the first dead unicorn?


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Wow - he's not a fan,  is he...  don't think it's possible to have an opinion on this.  Comment against it,  and folks will think you're in the company's pocket;  comment in favour (ie 'Evernote sucks') and why are you reading this anyway?  The guy's correct - Evernote is having a hard time.  The new CEO might do something about that,  which will be good;  or he might not.  We can't influence the decisions he makes other than by feeding back ongoing problems in the forums and through Support.  I know various 'power users' who have drifted away - I haven't yet,  because Evernote still works for me.  I'm not too fussed about this learned commenters' opinion - if Evernote continues to do the business for me,  I'll continue to use it for as long as I can.  If it fails to deliver,  I'll find something else.

 

To misquote Jean Rasczak from Starship Troopers (Bill Heinlein,  good bloke..) "I need a platform for notes and clips. You're it, until you're dead or I find someone better."

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  • Level 5*

Thanks for posting the link. It was an interesting read and, for folks who haven't been closely following EN news, a helpful post to get them up to speed.

The gist of it seems to be that EN is in a death spiral because the CEO (now in a different position) doesn't care what happens anymore, morale is low, "buzz" is low, the product is so-so, and they aren't delivering anything businesses need. Does that sound about right? He seems kind of pessimistic (about EN and others), but he's given this a lot of thought, so maybe we should pay attention to his speculation.

I don't know if the author is right. I don't have any knowledge of EN's inner workings and I cannot predict the future, especially based almost entirely on anecdotes and metrics that don't show any insight into revenue streams. Josh's "evidence" to support his diagnosis and prescription didn't convince me, but it might convince others. Where I would agree is that the landscape has shifted a lot, and Evernote is having to struggle a bit to keep its footing (pivoting to business, abandoning services, sloughing off a CEO, etc.).

Personally, I'd like to see Evernote become the most secure, trusted, reliable, ubiquitous, and scalable personal brain out there first, and collaborative platform second. Unless I can really "remember everything" (lots of data, including sensitive material), it's difficult to rely on it, and I imagine businesses / universities face the same problem. Would this help EN's bottom line? I don't know.

At the moment, I feel like EN is geared mainly towards casual users who have a few hundred notes at most. Changing this might help. The business stuff faces some of the same problems "power users" encounter, but with the additional demands placed on it by the enterprise environment. Building for the power or business users five or ten years in the future will give today's users confidence to invest time, money, and data into the product. In my case, robust encryption options are at the top of the wish list. It may not be a topic of much interest to other individuals, but businesses would surely appreciate better security (zero-knowledge encryption).

That's just my amateur assessment of what might help Evernote (and me). In the end, with a growing user base of 150 million users all over the world, it may well be that reports of Evernote's death are greatly exaggerated, and it doesn't need our backstreet-driver advice.

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The most damning critique of Evernote in 2015 is Phil Libin's comments about Evernote in 2012:

 

Evernote competes with Dropbox, Box, iCloud, and Google Drive in cloud storage, Instapaper and Spool in web clipping, and Photoshop and Gimp in image editing as Evernote acquired image annotator Skitch last year. The wealth of established competitors indicate a challenge for Evernote, but also a clear need for its products.  Libin tells me he doesn’t see competitors as Evernote’s biggest threat, though. “The most likely way we’ll fail is if we stop making good products. If we get defensive, we’ll lose focus on quality.”
 
Evernote hasn't made even good products for a long time. Like many others I've talked to, I was once a heavy Evernote user, and its died a slow death of irrelevance in my work flow. It fails to even do one thing great, and instead tries to make up for it by doing a number of other things poorly.

 

When people talk of their opinions in absolutes like this, I find it hard to take them seriously. Evernote makes a fantastic product. I think the author forgot that a product doesn't have to be flawless to still be good. If it "died a slow death of irrelevance" in this guy's workflow, it's not because Evernote's a bad product - it's because it no longer fit his needs.

 

Things Evernote does great:

  • Storage
  • Speed
  • Platform availability
  • Feature ability
  • Web clipping
  • OCR
  • Search
  • Regular updates
  • Ease of use

I can't even think of a single thing, outside of fringe use cases, that Evernote does poorly. Some features are a bit buggy (wonky highlighting with OCR, for example), but it's not poorly done. The OCR still works wonderfully. Sure, it could use better security, but its security isn't poor. Sure, it could use some bugs squished, but the app is perfectly serviceable. I've used plenty of apps that perform poorly (Todoist & Mac OneNote, I'm looking at you), and Evernote is polished perfection in comparison.

 

This guy also says a lot of things without citing his sources, especially with regards to Evernote Business. So, all I can take away from that is that's he's projecting based on opinion and anecdotal evidence. 

 

I appreciate his opinion - I just disagree. If Evernote fails in the next year I'll be very surprised - its user base is massive and only growing. I have 7,500+ notes in Evernote and it performs wonderfully for me every day - and I run the betas on all of my devices. It's reliable and powerful. Sure, Evernote's had its struggles, but I think we're on the rebound. The app is insanely useful and it'd be terrible for a ***** ton of people if Evernote went under. 

 

EDIT: LOL at the filters in here, sheesh.

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  • Level 5

I am worried about the direction of the company:

  • There were rumors of an annual Evernote get-together this fall, but now, all I hear are the crickets.
  • Phil LIbin (former CEO) gave me the impression that he is completely burned out.
  • I have been very disappointed at how quiet Chris O’Neill (new CEO ) is. No big talks about his vision of the future. Not even some communication on what is happening today in the company. Just some bland PR talk. 

Ominous clouds on the horizon.

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To my mind, the thing that Evernote does poorly is note/text editing. It works ok on the Mac, but on IOS you are stuck with a small, unchangeable font, cut and paste from other sources is erratic, bullets or check boxes often cause problems, etc. Similar issues on Android.

And there are tons of really good note apps on IOS and Android. So once you figure out that there are better apps for note taking and start using them, you start drifting away from Evernote all together. That's where I am now - I used to do everything in Evernote, but now it is just an archive for web clips and PDFs - my active notes and tasks are now elsewhere.

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  • Level 5*

To my mind, the thing that Evernote does poorly is note/text editing. It works ok on the Mac, but on IOS you are stuck with a small, unchangeable font, cut and paste from other sources is erratic, bullets or check boxes often cause problems, etc. Similar issues on Android.

And there are tons of really good note apps on IOS and Android. So once you figure out that there are better apps for note taking and start using them, you start drifting away from Evernote all together. That's where I am now - I used to do everything in Evernote, but now it is just an archive for web clips and PDFs - my active notes and tasks are now elsewhere.

 

The note editor needs love, for sure. I seem to recall a staff member commenting that this is a top priority for them, somewhere here in the forums... if I weren't so lazy on Monday afternoons, I'd find it :D

 

I'm a minimalist at heart, though, and I'm happy the mobile Evernote apps keep note-editing to the basics. Too many buttons for modifying stuff becomes a pain. And for me, it's much more important ALL of my information be together - I managed a dual major in college with plain text notes, I can manage my real life too. I very, VERY rarely customize the text of my notes - and when I do, it's bold/italic almost exclusively. Of course, that's not everyone's needs, but for me Evernote works well. I certainly haven't found an app that does better, though, and I've tried a lot of them. YMMV.

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The author may be right in his assessment.  I wonder if we will know within in a year. 

 

Is EN in such a steep dive it cannot recover, another Blackberry, don't know the answer to that either.  I guess all of this is why you get new management to create relevancy for Evernote, hopefully with a nice by product of profitability. 

 

If no statement from the new team as to direction before the end of the year, either in words or preferably in actions, he may indeed be right.  But meanwhile, I'm with Chirmer.  It is a fantastic product I will continue to use (and I really don't use it for note taking).

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"It fails to even do one thing great, and instead tries to make up for it by doing a number of other things poorly."

 

Yeaaahhh hard to argue against that.

 

See my post above - I did argue against this very thing. Evernote's a great product.

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..and maybe they're just very busy getting on with being successful?  - Appearing less responsive to customers and generally less well organised can be growing pains too...  they're claiming 3000% here - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/india-userbase-crosses-5-million-mark-among-top-5-markets-evernote/articleshow/48957786.cms

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..and maybe they're just very busy getting on with being successful?  - Appearing less responsive to customers and generally less well organised can be growing pains too...  they're claiming 3000% here - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/india-userbase-crosses-5-million-mark-among-top-5-markets-evernote/articleshow/48957786.cms

Phenomenal growth, to be sure, but that is over a five year period. To put that into perspective with numbers from another unicorn, Dropbox had 3900% growth in a fifteen month period. Comparing two unicorns is silly, of course, but does show that the numbers are somewhat difficult to interpret. What does it mean to grow like that, especially with a massive dropoff in users during the first few days of using EN (detailed by former CEO)?

Anyhow, too busy for five years to communicate might suggest the need for a new hire who can do that :) You're right, though, that there is success if you look for it. And, I doubt the CEO's quiet start has much bearing on the thriving / dying state of the unicorn. We can't really know much without revenue numbers.

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Pointless to speculate anyway - Evernote's getting to a size where us users can't see any visible activity,  no matter what's happening in boardrooms around the world.  The Greenrope deal suggests there's a level of activity of which we won't be aware until the grand anouncements are made - and EN seem to be capitalising on the synergy of their huge user base overlapping with other business products.  As to their weak points - I had to revisit a project recently that I finished with last year.. using Sharepoint as a 'wiki'.  Still haven't got the bad taste of the frustrations of that out of my mouth - by comparison with the multiple drawbacks of that operation,  Evernote is a shining example of coding excellence...

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Pointless to speculate anyway - Evernote's getting to a size where us users can't see any visible activity,  no matter what's happening in boardrooms around the world.  The Greenrope deal suggests there's a level of activity of which we won't be aware until the grand anouncements are made - and EN seem to be capitalising on the synergy of their huge user base overlapping with other business products.  As to their weak points - I had to revisit a project recently that I finished with last year.. using Sharepoint as a 'wiki'.  Still haven't got the bad taste of the frustrations of that out of my mouth - by comparison with the multiple drawbacks of that operation,  Evernote is a shining example of coding excellence...

 

LOL. Perhaps EN's biggest strenghts are its competitors' weaknesses. Very few options are available to tie together multiple operating systems in a collaborative environment, especially if you are not working in a large enterprise setting. You are stuck cobbling things together, or using Evernote. I'd say Google has made huge advancements here, so I would guess that it'd be able to step in where Sharepoint fails, but I suppose that would depend on your use case. At any rate, EN is well-positioned. Let's hope they capitalize on what they've got.

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I've been using Evernote for 4 years and it's a key part of my personal and work life, but I do live in fear every time there is a software update. Put simply, you never know if they are going to change something that completely messes with the way I use it.

 

Tags in evernote are the key thing for me that give it its power, and yet the iOS and Android versions have pathetic support for them. If you want to filter by a notebook and a tag, or by multiple tags, you have to run a search. Is it that much to ask for the basic, key functionality of the desktop app on the mobile versions?

 

And as mentioned above, the note editor itself really needs some TLC.

 

Evernote need to focus on the note-taking and filing aspects of the software, but as the article indicates, that may not be enough to make it a $1bn company, hence these "moonshots" like work chat.

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I'm a heavy user of Evernote and have been a member since 2008.  I'm a bit of an evangelist with my friends, etc. when it comes to this product, so am obviously not unbiased.

 

I too am a bit concerned about the changeover of the CEO and don't have the insight into the company #'s to know if they will be able to make it work as a billion dollar company.  One concern I have continued to have is the talk of going public.  I understand they need / want to do this to get $$$ back to the investors and to continue to grow.  But am concerned how it will affect the product and their stated goal of building a trusted 100 year company.  I had found that stated goal to be very refreshing and have trusted them up to this point.  We'll see what the future holds.  If things do go bad, I'm going to be in a fair quandary trying to move to something different.

 

From a functionality standpoint, I do disagree with this article.  I have always tried new products that have come out in this space and always find them lacking when compared to Evernote.  Sure you can pick and choose features and say there are better alternate solutions out there.  But no product that I have seen brings all these features together so you can everything in one place (i.e. your 2nd brain) as well as Evernote.  To compare Photoshop or Gimp to Skitch is not a fair comparison.  Also to compare a file based service such as Dropbox to Evernote is not a fair comparison.  

 

I always read these articles that say there are better alternatives out there, but I've never come across one - and believe me I have looked.

 

Just my 2 cents.

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An enjoyable read and of course one persons opinion, which I think he tries to explain in his follow up blog.

 

We predicted a while ago that the company needed a change at it's head and we have obviously now got it. It would be fool hardy of the new leader to publish anything too strong before he has finished his evaluations and discussed with those above him. It took me nearly 6 months to do the same in a much smaller company than Evernote! You MUST get your facts right.

 

As to the viability and future of Evernote, I do wonder if some people just want what they need and expect, 'everything', from a software package such as Evernote? That is not meant to be derogatory, just a thought.

 

When I sold quality control software some 30 years ago for £25k per floppy disc, I was often asked if the software would do 'this' or 'that', 'Because if it did, I would buy it now'. My answer was always the same, 'yes, it can do that'. But of course this would make it a bespoke package for that customer and the cost would be in the region of £250k! Needless to say no one took my offer up. But I then explained what I have on these and other forums many times:

 

Work within the limitations of the software. Make what it does work for you.

 

When I moved over from OneNote many years ago, I disliked the layout of Evernote. The reason being I was not used to it. I spent a bit of time working out how I could make Evernote 'mine'. I worked within it's 'limitations'! In the end I have over 20,000 Notes in my Business and Personal Evernote that makes my life and day so much easier.

 

Like all of us, there are bits that I would like to see changed. The biggest one that Grumpy talks about for a business, is of course security. But again I work within the limitations of that, making sure nothing goes into my Evernote that could cause me a problem.

 

What do I see in Evernote's future? I do believe we will see some changes over the next year, that will make it the leading product we once believed it was. Only my thoughts and perhaps hopes, but it is the way I see it. Bearing in mind that 12 - 18 months ago, I was looking at alternatives, that is a great step forward for Evernote!

 

I hasten to add, having been bitten too many times, I never upgrade straight away! However, I see that Evernote appears to be doing a better job of checking the upgrades before their release! Some of us old hands can tell of terrible times trying to resolve dreadful problems!

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

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  • Evernote Expert

Okay, my two cents here.. 

 

When I started using EN, the focus was on keeping information personal, an anti Facebook kind of thing ( You can find even Phil Libin quoting this same stuff in older notes..) I think as long as this focus was there, it was indeed a truly great product.. I think it was visualised this way from scratch.. Now, the only way was that they should have gotten better ways to convert free users to paid.. and so on..

 

And then over the last 2 years, suddenly, I think they realised somewhere that they were not making enough money or something, and then they try to scale the same infrastructure and tools for business, and re-use them here and around, and I think this is where it has seriously started annoying.. And again, a lot of misleading advertisements.. absolutely get me off.. Last Year Libin proudly announced that they have some deals with some magazines etc.. But did he mention that it is only for US citizens.. ? Nopey..

 

Not just that.. The greatest flop invariably is the EN Work Chat tool over the last year.. Maybe EN chat is great for EN business years all of whom are likely to use EN, but = ordinary free and Premium users.. It is a pain.. I absolutely hate it.. Hundreds of users have expressed their woes.. Till date, I have never shared a single EN note.. I have 9000+ of them.. They are all for my personal and own use. Maybe, I might even take it to my grave.. I am NOT SOCIAL>.. If I need to be social.. I have facebook.. To share.. Not my EN Notes.. Please.. and you force that @!#!@$!#$#!$R!#$! EN Chat Right across me.. 

 

Ads!!! Ads!! and more Ads !!! 

 

Over the last year, I have been pestered with Ads.. A promise which was clearly broken.. since I have been premium for 3+ years. I get Ads on the EN WebClipper, I get ads on EN IOS Client.. I get these nauseating ones everywhere.. If a paying user gets it, I can't fathom what a free user must be going through.. And it clearly goes against EN's mantra where they boasted saying that we won't pester you.. Infact we will make you use it so much,, you will want to upgrade to premium.. Now, apparently, they have backtracked.. Now, these aren't the monetization ads based on advertising and user data, which EN will anyway get money off leaving users no choice, but rather the pestering ads telling users to migrate to Premium.. A free user who is happy with the product will himself pay.. If he doesn't, then make him happy some more, to get the cash out of his pockeet... Sending him reminders is only surely goinna make him run away from you.. And Free users may even migrate off to One Note and other tools..  The Risk is there.. So things may just get backfiring ... 

 

 

What is the future? 

Over the last year, we have had umpteen releases.. But each release only talks about bug fixes , bug fixes and more bug fuxes. .I agree that the aesthetics of the app have become more beautifyl.. Barring some superficial changes, have we got any meaningful functional upgrade? Functional upgrade useful for paying 'Personal Use' premium users, and not the ones that you develop for Business and tell, go on, have a look at this, this is gonna be great and useful for premium .. Like EN Work Chat and EN Presentation Mode.. (  :unsure:  :unsure:  :unsure:

 

Reactions to the Article : 

 

I'll be optimistic and say that the article is all speculation.. But, it invokes a certain danger in me. Now, what if we had a day when EN indeed shut? For over a year, I have expressed my grievances that EN is not having the focus that I looked for . I pay only 45$ a year, but a business guy pays 120$ a year. I think we can safely assume that EN's focus will be on Business here on.. But what is the competition? Is EN business doing as good as say Google Apps for Business? I don't think so.. 

 

But. I don't think there is one good competition for Evernote Premium/Evernote Free in the Individual User Note space.. I only wished that they would realise this fact and focus here.. But i don't think it is coming back..  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:

 

Fine.. So with this sort of a situation.. I am considering a worst case scenario.. Remember how the Springpad users felt when they shut shop  :wacko:  :wacko:  :wacko:

 

EN will surely allow me to export the data as one huge chunk of HTML or MHT or whatever.. But is that what i invested in EN for? My data is organized the way, I need and interpret and have refined oevr the years.. Neatly, into Notebooks, Tags and Sub Tags.. Now.. that is what is the purpose of it, right? I dont want to spend years organizing all this data and have it bundled into one big HTML File..

 

At this point in time, From the options seen so far, I dont think any of the cloud guys MS One Note  ( One Note's webclipper  :D  :D  :D ) or Keep come close.. The only possible alternative at this point i see is a Synology NAS.. But, depending on the position that the company is moving in the next few months ( I still have 2 years of EN Premium left still  :wacko:  :wacko: .. So i'll still be around  :)  :)  :) ), but will EN get more cash out of my pocket? That will depend the way, the company goes ahead in monhs to come..  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:

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It interested me that he mentioned Slack in the write up.

 

Never heard of it before, yet he mentioned it a few times. Just checked and it is a paid for service which does away with emails, I think!

 

But Asana is already there and it is free! I wonder why he didn't mention that?

 

Regards

 

Chris

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  • Level 5*

Not just that.. The greatest flop invariably is the EN Work Chat tool over the last year.. Maybe EN chat is great for EN business years all of whom are likely to use EN, but = ordinary free and Premium users.. It is a pain.. I absolutely hate it.. Hundreds of users have expressed their woes.. Till date, I have never shared a single EN note.. I have 9000+ of them.. They are all for my personal and own use. Maybe, I might even take it to my grave.. I am NOT SOCIAL>.. If I need to be social.. I have facebook.. To share.. Not my EN Notes.. Please.. and you force that @!#!@$!#$#!$R!#$! EN Chat Right across me..

 

I wouldn't say Work Chat is a flop. At least, not from my perspective. I and a couple other coworkers all use Evernote religiously, and we use Work Chat all the time. We also use Slack, and those apps overlap a lot. But, Slack doesn't support sharing Evernote notes. We store everything in Evernote, so what do we do? Use Work Chat. It's been really beneficial for us - sharing meeting notes, project outlines and more has been a breeze.

 

I do miss public notebooks something fierce, though.

 

What is the future?

Over the last year, we have had umpteen releases.. But each release only talks about bug fixes , bug fixes and more bug fuxes. .I agree that the aesthetics of the app have become more beautifyl.. Barring some superficial changes, have we got any meaningful functional upgrade? Functional upgrade useful for paying 'Personal Use' premium users, and not the ones that you develop for Business and tell, go on, have a look at this, this is gonna be great and useful for premium .. Like EN Work Chat and EN Presentation Mode..

Remember, though, that the previous year Evernote had the whole "Every update brings a new, buggy, and half-planned feature" that enraged users. Their app store reviews were abysmal because they kept bringing out new features without fixing the bugs. It's a good thing they now emphasize bug fixes. I love Evernote the way it is, and I'll take a bug fix over a new feature any day. Not that I don't want new features, mind you, but... my priorities lie with stability over flashiness.

 

Fine.. So with this sort of a situation.. I am considering a worst case scenario.. Remember how the Springpad users felt when they shut shop

I was one of those Springpad users (was even featured on their blog), and while the loss of Springpad burned, the writing was very much on the wall for a long time. Their user base was very small, it had syncing problems for years, and its best features required one to really learn the software in order to take advantage of it. I definitely don't see Evernote in the same league as Springpad. It's got a massive userbase, strong financials, and powerful yet easy to use software on a huge variety of platforms. 

 

It interested me that he mentioned Slack in the write up.

 

Never heard of it before, yet he mentioned it a few times. Just checked and it is a paid for service which does away with emails, I think!

 

But Asana is already there and it is free! I wonder why he didn't mention that?

 

Regards

 

Chris

 

Slack and Asana aren't the same type of product, really. Slack is real-time communication, Asana is a project manager. They're very much different markets (though they work very well together). Also, Slack is free in the same sense that Asana is free. With Slack you just get an archive of your last 10k messages, and with Asana you're limited to <15 users.

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It interested me that he mentioned Slack in the write up.

 

Never heard of it before, yet he mentioned it a few times. Just checked and it is a paid for service which does away with emails, I think!

 

But Asana is already there and it is free! I wonder why he didn't mention that?

 

Regards

 

Chris

Maybe because Slack is probably the fastest company to become unicorn ($1B+ valuation)?

 

The problem with Evernote is that they started to fight on too many fronts:

  • They are a note taking company but their editor is far from perfect
  • They sell their web version as perfect writing environment but forget about other clients
  • They release extremely badly done features - just look at Work Chat and try not to cry
  • They try to approach businesses with a plan 3 times more expensive than Premium only because it is called Business
  • They even sell physical goods!

In my opinion, they should do some proper marketing research, find out what we want and move from there.

 

For example, I have problems to get my wife use Evernote because she does not want to accept she has to SYNC everytime. She usually writes a shopping list on her Mac, closes the computer and leaves for the shop. At the shop, she opens Evernote on her Android phone and... there is no list because Mac did not sync. How many users have this problem? Maybe it makes sense to invest into preparing Google-Docs-like solution?

 

I am sure there are hundreds of other small, medium and big things like the one described which put people off. After all, $50 a year is not a lot of money to be organised. The idea to offer cheap solution to many people is correct, but maybe there is no need to be so "moonshotty"?

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Evidently intended for a closed audience -- only the 1st page is viewable without an account.

 

 

OOPS. YOU CAN'T GO THERE!

You have attempted to access an area of ProgrammableWeb that is only accessible to logged-in users or ProgrammableWeb staff
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Evidently intended for a closed audience -- only the 1st page is viewable without an account.

 

 

OOPS. YOU CAN'T GO THERE!

You have attempted to access an area of ProgrammableWeb that is only accessible to logged-in users or ProgrammableWeb staff

 

 

No problem for me, and I am not a member. The author made some interesting points. 

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Evidently intended for a closed audience -- only the 1st page is viewable without an account.

 

 

OOPS. YOU CAN'T GO THERE!

You have attempted to access an area of ProgrammableWeb that is only accessible to logged-in users or ProgrammableWeb staff

 

 

No problem for me, and I am not a member. The author made some interesting points. 

 

 

 

Same here, no problem looking at all three pages.

 

Another enjoyable report, thanks for finding Cal.

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Nice read in defense. Did you too notice he only mentions Evernote use cases of a SINGLE USER organising their world? Not a word about fantastic business-targetted features companies can't leave without. 

 

I guess lack of focus or focus on the wrong thing is what the "Evernote's dead" author meant. Also, it is not about Evernote going bust in a year or three but rather a decade or two of moving into the area of irrelevancy.

 

Evernote needs to go back to their roots. A single user organising their world. Then start to think about what is important for this single user. Their work or maybe their family? Etc.

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Nice read in defense. Did you too notice he only mentions Evernote use cases of a SINGLE USER organising their world? Not a word about fantastic business-targetted features companies can't leave without. 

 

I guess lack of focus or focus on the wrong thing is what the "Evernote's dead" author meant. Also, it is not about Evernote going bust in a year or three but rather a decade or two of moving into the area of irrelevancy.

 

Evernote needs to go back to their roots. A single user organising their world. Then start to think about what is important for this single user. Their work or maybe their family? Etc.

 

I think the author wasn't clear what he meant. I certainly am not. Evernote is dead, we just don't know it (from the sub-heading). But, he said later in the original article that Evernote isn't dead yet. Then, in a follow-up article, he mentions that his title was misleading in two respects: there may have already been a dead unicorn, and Evernote is going to be fine for a long while. 

https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55f85c16ba7f8e12516e8a77

 

So... Evernote isn't dead. It is alive and well. And, it won't be the first unicorn to die when it does meet its demise (if that even happens). Link-bait that caught CNBC's eye, I guess. 

https://twitter.com/jason/status/643822073559683072

 

This seems to fit, more or less, with my original assessment of the article. There isn't much substance there, though I appreciate the fact that he took the time to write down his thoughts. As one guy's opinion, it seems worth talking about. I'd add that the tech press churns out a lot of words, but not a whole lot of substance, and we feed into this news-like sludge by reading and linking to it (I am as guilty of this as anyone else). This might be the real problem here.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/88363-evernote-the-first-dead-unicorn/?p=377682

 

Perhaps, as a community, we (including me) ought to be a bit more measured in our writing. I know this is the Wild-West Internet and all, but it wouldn't hurt us to slow down and communicate our thoughts more carefully. After all, our words can have a big impact (positive or negative) on the app and the folks (users and developers) whose livelihoods depend on its well-being. Who wants to use a "dead" product or work at a "dead" company?

 

If there really is something wrong, of course we should speak out about it, but we could do with less poorly substantiated speculation (especially when not clearly identified as such). That's the lesson that comes to my mind now, and I'll try not to forget it in the future.

 

By the way, I'm glad Berlind (rebuttal article) pointed out the glaring conflict of interest that Dickson has, and Dickson really should have mentioned that he is essentially building an Evernote competitor -- was anyone able to find something like this in the original article? If it was there, I overlooked it. 

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The best point about the rebuttal article is that Evernote is not simply a note-taking app. In fact, these days, I don't use it much for note taking. I've always been big on promoting Evernote's OCR and search capabilities. Writing in Evernote is but one way to get data in. I get data into Evernote mostly in other ways. Also... good luck to this critic trying to cook up an app that integrates with most noteworthy apps out there. So really, Evernote is bigger than the Evernote product itself. Don't get me started on 3rd-party apps...

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Evidently intended for a closed audience -- only the 1st page is viewable without an account.

 

 

OOPS. YOU CAN'T GO THERE!

You have attempted to access an area of ProgrammableWeb that is only accessible to logged-in users or ProgrammableWeb staff

 

 

No problem for me, and I am not a member. The author made some interesting points. 

 

 

Interesting.  The page links now also work for me, allowing me to view the entire article.

Maybe they made a change, or maybe I just screwed up.  Who knows.

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Work within the limitations of the software. Make what it does work for you.

 

I agree, to a point.  It is truly amazing what taking this approach can accomplish, with any software.  The product I work on was designed for a very specific purpose - allowing non-technical people to use a browser-based UI to configure very technical programs without knowing tech-speak so that those programs could run later, usually repeatedly.  That required our providing a UI builder, designed for this purpose.

 

Our first customer used our product for its intended purpose.  Our second customer used our product for its intended purpose.  Our third customer used it for something we'd never thought of.  Today, we have more customers than I am aware of, a large number of whom are using it for things that blow my mind.

 

Rob's Law: If you give people a UI builder targeted at non-technical people, they will always try to build whatever UI they need.

 

The customers who use it for its intended purpose generally have an easy time of it.  The customers who don't often have trouble.

 

Rob's Corollary: If you give people a UI builder designed for a specific purpose, it will be limited when used to build UI for other purposes.

 

People worked within those limitations, and built pretty amazing stuff.  They used kludges, hacks, and frightening code to accomplish it.  This led to a lot of support work on our part.  And we couldn't just say "well, you're not using it for its intended purpose" - these are our customers, and we are a large company serving large enterprises who are paying us lots of money.

 

So we adapted the software.  We added UI bits.  We added stuff under the covers.  We moved the hacks, kludges, and frightening code to our side (trying to make it non-hacky, non-kludgy, non-frightening) in a way that was generic enough to make it part of the product instead of bespoke.

 

Now we've got a product that supports a broader range of features and concepts than it was initially designed for, and our users who were happy with the product but frustrated at having to work hard to do what they needed are now ecstatic.

 

Rob's Postulate to Rob's Corollary: Listen to your users when they bump up against your product's limitations.  It'll make them (and you) much happier.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've used plenty of apps that perform poorly (Todoist & Mac OneNote, I'm looking at you), and Evernote is polished perfection in comparison.

 

 

Just curious, because I am interested in productivity as well, in which way you think Todoist performs poorly? At the moment I both use Todoist (paid) and Wunderlist (free version), but I find it difficult to choose between which one I am going to use permanently. Both work great, although I wish Wunderlist would handle subtasks as Todoist does. 

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I've been an off and on (mostly off) Evernote user for the past 5 years.  Evernote has some workflow glitches that I'm simply unwilling to deal with.  I also can't evangelize a product that I'd like to get my co-workers to use when I know the workflow isn't intuitive enough for me to hand to them and walk away - it will require significant ongoing training and explanation.  "Why did they do it that way?" is such a time killer when there's really no good explanation.

 

The biggest feature that still irritates me is email to Evernote.  I have Gmail rules that auto-sort my emails into folders by client (I'm working as a Realtor so you have some perspective).

 

Each new client gets two rules in Gmail - one rule sorts their email into a folder, the other email forwards their email to Boxcar (for instant push notifications).  To get emails into a corresponding Evernote folder I have to open the email, change the subject, and forward it to Evernote.

 

It would be so much easier to allow me to forward the email (using plus addressing) to Evernote and have Evernote automagically sort that email into the proper folder every time.  I could then also set up additional rules if I wanted to sort that same email into additional folders by forwarding it to additional plus-addresses.  Evernote was so close, but so far away on this that the email feature is all but useless in a workflow unless you want to be 100% hands on with every email you want in Evernote.  Why should I have to go through IFTTT or Zapier for this when the solution is so simple.

 

A few years ago I moved to Mac (the search feature is awesome), I scan everything in using my ScanSnap which OCR's every document, AppleMail downloads all my Gmail, all docs go in Dropbox - when I search on the Mac (Cmd+SPACE if you're wondering), it searches EVERYTHING on my Mac - emails, pdfs, word docs, spreadsheets, filenames, etc.  It's tremendous.  Evernote should work in a similar manner.

 

The problem with Evernote is that with each new feature it adds it creates micro-barriers when adding things into its "organizational" system.  Sure, if I wanted to store everything in one folder, I could probably search my way to whatever document I needed...but how would I selectively share a folder with my transaction coordinator, or a buyer's lender, or the title company.

 

Don't even get me started on sub-folders/sub-notebooks/notebook tabs...I've heard the "tags" explanation so many times I could probably recite some of the answers verbatim.

 

 

I'm waiting for the new CEO to dust off the cobwebs and straighten out how Evernote works.

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I've used plenty of apps that perform poorly (Todoist & Mac OneNote, I'm looking at you), and Evernote is polished perfection in comparison.

 

 

Just curious, because I am interested in productivity as well, in which way you think Todoist performs poorly? At the moment I both use Todoist (paid) and Wunderlist (free version), but I find it difficult to choose between which one I am going to use permanently. Both work great, although I wish Wunderlist would handle subtasks as Todoist does. 

 

I'm curious as well.  I suspect it is use case differences.  I also use Todoist premium and for how I use it, it works wonderfully.  The "it performs poorly comment" caught my eye.  I honestly can't think of anything that I would like changed in Todoist.  I'm a heavy user on both Windows and ios but only individually.  I don't use the share functions so maybe the problems are mainly there ... just speculating.

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I've used plenty of apps that perform poorly (Todoist & Mac OneNote, I'm looking at you), and Evernote is polished perfection in comparison.

 

 

Just curious, because I am interested in productivity as well, in which way you think Todoist performs poorly? At the moment I both use Todoist (paid) and Wunderlist (free version), but I find it difficult to choose between which one I am going to use permanently. Both work great, although I wish Wunderlist would handle subtasks as Todoist does. 

 

 

 

 

 

I've used plenty of apps that perform poorly (Todoist & Mac OneNote, I'm looking at you), and Evernote is polished perfection in comparison.

 

 

Just curious, because I am interested in productivity as well, in which way you think Todoist performs poorly? At the moment I both use Todoist (paid) and Wunderlist (free version), but I find it difficult to choose between which one I am going to use permanently. Both work great, although I wish Wunderlist would handle subtasks as Todoist does. 

 

I'm curious as well.  I suspect it is use case differences.  I also use Todoist premium and for how I use it, it works wonderfully.  The "it performs poorly comment" caught my eye.  I honestly can't think of anything that I would like changed in Todoist.  I'm a heavy user on both Windows and ios but only individually.  I don't use the share functions so maybe the problems are mainly there ... just speculating.

 

 

I've used Todoist for years (my karma is over 13,000) and sad to say I've run into a LOT of problems as of late that are hindering my use, most of which are decisions on Todoist's staff side, which is all the more mind-boggling.

  • There's no way to have a repeat task with repeated subtasks. If you set the parent task to repeat the subtasks always show up as completed. If you set them all to repeat, all of the subtasks show up as parent tasks in your Today list, in addition to showing up as subtasks to the parent task. It's a mess.
  • Sorting tasks by alphabet also sorts the subtasks alphabetically. I cannot think of a single use case for this... 
  • Tasks do not show up in the order Todoist staff say they do. For example, your Today view should be tasks by Priority, then Project Order, then Order in Project. They don't honor this with any consistency, often showing up jumbled.
  • The 200 tasks/project is quite limiting, though this is a minor problem.
  • The launch of their PowerApps (Evernote, Google Calendar) failed almost immediately - servers overloaded and it's been broken for months.
  • Natural language input is broken for many non-English languages.
  • IFTTT integration is buggy in performance with the app - for example, you can search in Todoist inside a project with p:PROJECTNAME and it will search both inside that project and its subprojects. But try to do the same with the IFTTT recipe and it only searches inside the parent project.
  • Certain searches bug out on mobile but work on desktop. I used to do much more complex Filtering but half wouldn't work on mobile, so I now have the bare minimum necessary. Disappointing.

Some of my gripes got fixed with the recent rebrand, such as task notes being Notes with a Note icon on the desktop but Comments with a Comment icon on mobile. But the ones above still exist and can be crippling, especially when the app is so great outside of these flaws.

 

Anyway, apologies for the off-topic post...

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I do miss public notebooks something fierce, though.

 

 

@chirmer,

 

Public notebooks are still there for me... you just have to go into "Modify sharing..."  and look for the Publish button. 

 

 

Oh wow, I never saw that somehow! Too bad it still uses the old web app design... as soon as that gets revamped, I plan on using this intensely :) Thanks!

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I really liked this in the beginning (Evernote).
I find it so limiting that is has actually turned into a fricking joke.

How can one NOT have internal linking? 
To not be able to have a table of contents...  ANCHORS - I mean how hard could that be?

So sad - 

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Lots of interesting inside info. from past and present employees. One excerpt:

“There was a feeling that we were working on the wrong priorities,” a former employee said. “It was clear the motive was to just continually drum up press. They had no idea how to optimize and improve growth.”

It is a crying shame that EN did not take full advantage of the prolific feedback right here in the forums. Many posts and suggestions by a bunch of smart and knowledgeable power users went unheeded. All there for the picking.

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much like glassdoor, anonymous quotes from former employees are a little difficult to trust, but i don't think any of the sentiments sound too far off the mark. there are certainly folks on this forum, including myself, who feel that there were missed opportunities to improve the product in meaningful ways rather than changing this or that, or adding new and unnecessary features. perhaps now things will change with new management, though i find it difficult to find fault with phil, who built the company up, and i suspect more systemic organizational issues that are not attributable to any one person. lots of great people, but the whole isn't quite equal to the sum of its parts.

going forward, i'd suggest evernote radically rethink its priorities, starting with communication. when did they ever mention the evernote conference was going to be cancelled? if i had known about this south korea event, i might have gone; another missed opportunity to connect with users. documentation is still woefully inadequate -- from the products themselves to evernote's activities; the blog long ago ceased to be a source of need-to-read info. 

at the moment, i'm unclear about the vision going forward. is evernote our "external brain?" is it our "workspace?" it can be both, of course, but what i'd like to see is them do is distinguish themselves from the competition and provide something i need: the most ubiquitous (available and usable on major platforms), reliable (scalable), and secure environment (zero-knowledge encrypted notebooks) out there for getting stuff done.

concretely, i'd say cut back to windows desktop, mac, android, ios, and web. get these products working with feature parity around core features and sell it as the best personal information manager out there (drop this bizarre notion of taking on microsoft office, eliminating email, etc.) i think cutting edge stuff is nice, of course, and we could use it (ai stuff could be improved along the lines suggested by us for years now), but users live in the real world where they have to deal with office, email, and very real security issues right now. a product for my life ten years in the future when powerpoint is dead and bare bones presentations are all the rage isn't necessarily the best one for me now.

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By the way, saying that Evernote missed some opportunities doesn't mean they are unique in this respect or doomed to failure. Reading the news about Microsoft Office on the newest version of Apple's operating system ought to be a reminder that even a couple of the largest software developers in the world with massive resources sometimes can't get stuff to work right. 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2988941/software-productivity/office-2016-for-mac-users-plagued-by-crashes-after-upgrading-to-os-x-el-capitan.html

 

Speaking for myself, I am not interested in encountering these kind of work-ending issues in any software. I work mainly with plain text under the assumption (fingers crossed) that if something goes wrong in one program, I've got a few others that can pick up the slack. It's when you rely on one product or feature that absolutely must work perfectly that things seem to go horribly wrong.

 

In the case of Evernote, one thing I wish they would have done with the Web redesign is to make it accessible on mobile. In the past, when the mobile apps had issues, you could turn to the mobile version or the Web version and get something done. Sure, there were kludgy workarounds for the terrible interface on the regular Web version (not the special mobile one) that required alternative browsers (Puffin, as I recall), but it *could* be done. By going back a decade or more in thinking and designing solely for the desktop, Evernote has closed off that avenue for its users, and now there is a single point of failure. If (when) the mobile apps go bad (especially iOS, which won't let you side load an older version), you are finished.

 

These are the kind of real-world use cases that an enthusiastic user base, coupled with responsive developers, can overcome. Evernote has both of these, and if they put them into more effective dialogue (users active in the initial design, alpha, and beta stages), I think great things can happen. At least, that is my hope. 

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The inside story of how $1 billion Evernote went from Silicon Valley darling to deep trouble 
by uk.businessinsider.com,  Oct 3, 2015
 
This sums it up for me:

Wrong priorities
 
Several former employees believe a lack of focus hampered Evernote's growth. Instead of focusing on its core note-taking product and on converting users to the paid service, Evernote spent more time releasing a bunch of new products and features that only helped it grab news headlines, they said.

 

In particular, the former CEO, Phil Libin, and his executive staff, seemed more interested in "bending the universe" (whatever that is) than producing a high quality, reliable product.

 

The good news is that the new CEO seems to have recognized this flawed approach, and is now trying to correct it:

 

A Note from Chris O'Neill, new Evernote CEO -- EN Blog 

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“There was a feeling that we were working on the wrong priorities,” a former employee said. “It was clear the motive was to just continually drum up press. They had no idea how to optimize and improve growth.”

It is a crying shame that EN did not take full advantage of the prolific feedback right here in the forums. Many posts and suggestions by a bunch of smart and knowledgeable power users went unheeded. All there for the picking.

 

Well, well, well...!  What have we here???

 

I leave the forum in frustration a few months ago, and now I read this article before checking back in here. And to find that Lubin has gone, a new CEO rules (we think), and that some people think that Evernote has lost its way...

 

Hmmm - let me see:

 

Right here, in this very set of forums, many long-time users, (including moi), most very knowledgeable (me a little bit), and most with no axe to grind (like me, we all want EN to continue and thrive), repeatedly complained about several things, only to be told that it was basically their way or the highway. Things such as:

 

- Constant "new" desktop (Mac in my case) clients that were worse than older versions.

 

- Poor editor in the desktop clients.

 

- Removing the ability to configure even the fundamentals such as the toolbar, especially the ability to ADD functions - you know, stuff we don't REALLY need to do much, like PRINT and EMAIL NOTE... (sarcasm switch flicked).

 

- Awful change from a nice characteristic green/black/grey colour scheme to an awful faded grey on white mess "because Apple said so" (no they didn't).

 

- Added in not only the useless (to most of us) Work Chat rubbish, but then forced the button onto the non-configurable toolbar for all of us.

 

And the list goes on.  And on.

 

So WHY did nobody take any notice of the valuable feedback they were getting from long time denizens of these 'ere forums? (fora??)

 

I got the distinct impression, despite Marcus's responses on the forum (and I'm referring to the Mac client branch of the forum here, as with the list above too), that it was Lubin's "vision" that was taking EN away from what it was good at. And instead of building on its strengths, it just kept trying to pour out new versions, new "features" (eg Work Chat), while at the same time ignoring things like Penultimate, Skitch, etc.

 

Me? I'm still happily using Evernote for Mac v5.4.2 (I downgraded ages ago and have updates turned off). I do wish I could add functions such as Print, Email Note, etc as buttons to my toolbar, though. That ability had gone even as far back as v5.4.2 - but the Work Chat button isn't on there in that version.

 

I use EN on my iPad, my iPhone, 5 separate desktop Macs (iMacs and Macbooks) at home and at work. I'm heavily invested in Evernote. I've been Premium since almost the beginning, and have a Family subscription. I have thousands of notes, clips, etc all random, but tagged, and sorted into many notebooks. I can find anything in there in a flash.

 

I would really love a better editor, both on the Mac and also the iOS versions. I would REALLY love the ability to embed video clips instead of just their URLs. I would love to have a FULLY configurable toolbar. I'd like more colour to be put back so that it looks like my v5.4.2.

 

So, yes, I'd really love Evernote to thrive. But they need to get their ***** together. Stop putting out progressively worse Mac desktop clients. Get all versions of desktop EN to be feature-consistent across the board. Get configurable toolbars back. Get the signature colours of Evernote back.

 

And most of all - LISTEN TO YOUR MOST LOYAL AND KNOWLEDGEABLE USERS, RIGHT HERE ON THIS FORUM.

 

End of rant.... ;)

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The Mac editor on v6 is far superior to previous versions, you can configure your toolbar (with some limitations), sync is far quicker and more reliable than before. There's been an awful lot of BS over the last few years but the product has also been improved.

 

No doubt, it would have been improved further if they'd tried to listen to their users more.....

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Why not.  I published my take.  I love Evernote, but I think it's clear to many that the way they've done things the past few years has raised questions about where they are going and how they are going to get there, not just as a product, but as a business.

http://taskclone.com/blog/evernotes-dilemma-how-to-revive-a-unicorn/

Thanks Troy. To clarify, I think Libin already staked out the focus on core product / cut staff approach when they stopped developing Peek, announced they'd discontinue Hello and Food, and cut a bunch of staff. I don't yet know what the new CEO is going to do in concrete terms, but so far it still appears similar: slough off apps and people. This approach can only carry them so far, though, and at some point they're going to have to produce an "essential" service (in my opinion). Workplace (in my opinion) won't cut it, and neither will quasi-Office features. A core product (as you mention) with a clear value proposition for users. In my case, I need the most robust personal information manager out there (notebook encryption, scalability, reliability, and customizability). When they get that, I think they'll really take off.

Or, maybe Chris has many better ideas (he ought to -- he's CEO) and I ought to chill out and watch to see what happens. At any rate, I don't think Evernote is a dead unicorn, and it doesn't need to be revived. Maybe it just needs to be pointed in the right direction.

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Over the past few years Evernote has - in my belief - been quite off in their focus. It will be necessary for Evernote to get it all straight, and blog posts like these (for what it's worth) make me believe change is coming: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/22/the-future-of-writing-in-evernote. Therefor, I trust in the new Evernote CEO to set a few things right. Step by step, built on a strong foundation.

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Whoever I talk to about Evernote tells me the same one thing: Evernote needs to be Evernote as it is for single user and like Google docs after notes are shared.

This is the main wish from many power users I talk to.

Hopefully they do proper market research.

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Over the past few years Evernote has - in my belief - been quite off in their focus. It will be necessary for Evernote to get it all straight, and blog posts like these (for what it's worth) make me believe change is coming: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/22/the-future-of-writing-in-evernote. Therefor, I trust in the new Evernote CEO to set a few things right. Step by step, built on a strong foundation.

Again, not a criticism, but rather a point of clarification. This effort began under Phil, according to the timeline in the blog post, so this is also not attributable to Chris.

Yes, it is great that he is continuing the work, and that he has pushed it out to beta testers, but this just another example of continuing old policies. In short, I don't think we (end users) are seeing the new CEO's changes yet. It's not uncommon for it to take a while for someone to make their mark, and it isn't uncommon for people to attribute any new changes to a new CEO (same thing happened in coverage of Microsoft). Time will tell.

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True. It wasn't obvious in my post that this was still Phil's effort, so thank you for clarifying this, GrumpyMonkey. Credit where credit is due. All I'm saying is that this is a step in the right direction, perhaps long overdue.

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Grumpy - The first thing i see directly is somehow, the immediate changes towards a more transparent policy - Focus on the core issues, and i can already sense it in the latest Windows Beta update - 

 

Sure, i have no grudges against Phil considering all he did, but i think over the last year, Phil was more about selling wallets, bags and telling people to consider that PowerPoint is dead etc, when we had so  many  issues under our own hood that needed to be addressed..

 

I see the first thing under the new CEO as saying 'Note Taking and Search' is our first priority.. I think that there is a huge difference, and this has to be solely attributatble to the new CEO.. 

 

Let us see if the momentum sustains,... Hopefully..

 

Good Luck..  :)  :)  :)

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  • 4 weeks later...
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Interview with Phil Libin on LinkedIn Pulse: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ex-ceo-evernote-isnt-really-interested-investing-heres-fairchild 

 

It's a nice interview and he shows some introspection in my opinion :) I thought you would find this perhaps interesting as well

 

Link is broken.  It says "Sorry, this post is no longer available"

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Interview with Phil Libin on LinkedIn Pulse: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ex-ceo-evernote-isnt-really-interested-investing-heres-fairchild 

 

It's a nice interview and he shows some introspection in my opinion :) I thought you would find this perhaps interesting as well

 

Link is broken.  It says "Sorry, this post is no longer available"

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ex-ceo-evernote-isnt-really-interested-investing-heres-fairchild?forceNoSplash=true

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evernote is a great product. I do see places where it can get better but I really do not understand why people are complaining. I've being using it on Android for 3 or 4 years already 2 of which I've been a premium user, and it has work great for me...

 

I wish all the best for the company because I love it and it would be sad to loose evernote. I have not find a service that works better accross platforms, not even onenote. Is there something better? Please tell me what is it! I hope they get everything together and make a great comeback

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The problem was the first article,  which had a point to make,  but IMHO over-dramatised it.  The problem is not that Evernote is going out of business (it does have 150M users - that's got to be a useful safety belt...) but that it's no longer expanding as fast as the market would like to see it expand.

 

Unfortunately that got interpreted by a lot of folks as 'jump ship now!' - which all goes to show that some prophecies can become self-fulfilling if you're not careful. 

 

I keep harping on with my Jean Rasczak quotes "I need a corporal. You're it, until you're dead or I find someone better."  (He was the management guru described in Robert A. Heinlein's book and film Starship Troopers. He also owned a BFG and was somewhere to the right of Attila.  My hero ^_^)

 

That's the way I view Evernote.  I'm busy here,  getting on with my life (and burbling away on this forum).  I don't want to have to waste spend time reviewing all the contenders for ENMk2,  which inevitably will have drawbacks of their own,  because no solution covers all my needs 100%.  If I find one,  I'll need work-arounds,  or I'll have to change the way I do things,  so I can get back into the saddle again. 

 

And I'll have a whole new learning curve,  because pretty much now;  when something new happens,  I'm familiar enough with what Evernote does and how it does it,  to know how to incorporate the newbie into the daily grind.  With ENMk2 I'll have to experiment,  and change,  and experiment some more.  Things will go slower,  and I have no incentive to get that frustrated as of now.

 

If,  and it's a big if,  something happens and I have to find an alternative,  I'm sure there will be some offers to step up from other providers that I might want to look at before committing elsewhere.  Also I'll have a big incentive to work something out in one intensive review over a couple of days or maybe a week.  Then I'll make my JR choice and continue on my merry way.  I'll have all my data (I do backups) and Evernote will limp on for a while even if the servers are nuked (see 'big if' above!),  because it's a stand-alone offline install on my laptop. 

 

I'll keep on using Evernote as long as it helps me get my work done,  and doesn't become unacceptably unusable.

 

There really is no need to panic,  the Sky Is Not Falling.  Even if it were,  MS OneNote seems a possible option...

 

-exit rant mode-

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The whole unicorn thing is just a financial journo construct - it's BS and articles about it are wonderful clickbait.

 

As Gaz says, 150m+ users and still growing means that they are probably pretty healthy. Just because some d*ck once valued them at $1B based on hearsay and guesswork doesn't mean that they were ever really worth it in the first place.

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<snip>

There really is no need to panic,  the Sky Is Not Falling.  

<snip>

 

Over the past 30 years, I have become experienced in moving my data from program to program.
  • Back in the 1980's I started my reminder/database collection with a DOS-based program called Lotus Agenda. It was a product ahead of its time, but Lotus could not handle the cross-over when Windows came on the scene.
  • I migrated to Lotus Symphony for several years. 
  • Then I switched to a 10-year-long love affair with Goldmine.
  • Goldmine merged with Frontrange and then dropped some huge price bombs which caused my exit.
  • For 5 years, I lived on Salesforce.com.
  • In July 2008, I made one last switch to a paperless office environment using Evernote and a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner.
Each transition was difficult and I know I lost quite a bit of information each time. As late as 2013, I was still manually pulling stuff from Frontmine Goldmine and pasting it into Evernote. But the increased efficiencies and search capabilities with Evernote made it worth the change. I hope this is my last change.
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Evernote is a great product. I do see places where it can get better but I really do not understand why people are complaining. I've being using it on Android for 3 or 4 years already 2 of which I've been a premium user, and it has work great for me...

 

I wish all the best for the company because I love it and it would be sad to loose evernote. I have not find a service that works better accross platforms, not even onenote. Is there something better? Please tell me what is it! I hope they get everything together and make a great comeback

I think the way you view Evernote really depends on how you use it. For instance, you say Evernote is a great product on Android, but from my perspective - most of my usage is for text notes - it is not good at all on Android, because the text editor is so bad. Evernote seems to agree with me on this, as I have briefly seen the beta version of the Android app that has a completely revamped text editor, and it is a vast improvement.

 

On the other hand, if you mostly use Evernote for clipping articles from the web, my experience is that it does that really well, and maybe no one does it better than Evernote.

 

I'm not sure that anyone has suggested that Evernote is going out of business, but there are obviously many more competitors out there than in the past - Keep, OneNote, Apple Notes, Google Drive, Dropbox have all improved while Evernote has been stagnant. And the claim that Evernote has 150 million users I found doubtful - I can imagine they have had that many registrations, but are that many active users? And how many are paid users? These competitors may not have exactly the right mix of capabilities that you need compared to Evernote, but for many people they do. For a casual note taker who is a potential Evernote customer and owns an iPhone, Apple Notes probably fills the bill. And that doesn't help Evernote's bottom line.

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