Last evening I stumbled on an interesting interview with David Engberg, the CTO of Evernote:

http://mixergy.com/dave-engberg-evernote-interview/

What I found especially fascinating was his description of the transition from the old Windows Evernote to the multiplatform software so familiar to us all now. I was caught in the middle of that awkward transition at the time, and it's reassuring to learn that we early users were not being paranoid after all: Phil Libin & Co. really did not see us as their target demographic and were eager to become a "lifestyle service" rather than a "productivity" app. The irony of it is that the Evernote corporation now talks endlessly about its productivity potential and even has a business version.

Here's the passage from the interview that caught my eye:

"We had a number of people that we had worked with before and that we brought together pretty quickly to build a team. And there was an existing company in the Bay area and in Moscow called Evernote that had been doing a note taking application for Windows as a Windows kind of a shareware application. That was really advanced for its time. It was much better than Microsoft OneNote, let’s say, and it had a lot of accolades.

"But fundamentally it was targeting the sort of people that would go out of their way to install Windows productivity software. And what Phil had a vision for was a service that would make it more of a lifestyle service that would transcend the productivity niche and make it something that could have more of, more the profile of an internet service that would grow like an internet service not like a Windows application."

Thanks, that's an interesting article. While it's not entirely clear, but according to one calculation I can make based on his information (20% of monthly users), Evernote has about 3.2 million paying customers then. Would it really have been an impossibility for them to get as many customers if they had stayed with the productivity niche and made Evernote really, really good?

Couldn't it be that now that they have proven to Microsoft that there is a market for the "lifestyle users," MS will just wipe the floor with them using OneNote? I imagine OneNote could easily get up to those numbers, if it's not well beyond that already. Probably most MS Office users don't even realise that they already have OneNote installed. MS just needs to exert a bit of effort and Evernote turns back into a niche application...

Yes, I'm a bit bitter about having been abandoned as an early Evernote user... ;)

When I read some of the "lifestyle" type items on the Evernote blog, I am astonished with how silly many of them are. The silliest of all (at least in my view) is their new "Post-It Note" camera.

"Make a notebook called Brainstorms and tie neon pink notes to that notebook. Whenever an idea strikes, jot it on a neon pink note and snap a photo to save it forever."

I mean, the technology for taking a digital photo of a note and automatically organizing it is interesting, but are they really suggesting that this is a viable process for note-taking? Write your note on a Post-It, then take a picture of that Post-It to insert into an Evernote note? Here's a better idea: Type it into an Evernote note and skip the Post-It and the photo. Next they'll have an index card camera... or got a great thought while in a public bathroom? Just scribble it onto the stall wall (between the nasty limerick and Nancy's phone number) and use the new graffiti camera to capture for later reference.

http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2013/09/26/evernote-and-post-itr-notes-partner-to-give-your-favorite-paper-product-a-digital-life/

Am I crazy thinking this is one of the most useless features ever?

Steve Z.

First I thought it was an April 1st joke. But they seem to be serious about it. And the comments on the page ...
OMG

Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Really quite sad, IMHO.

--Ken

I know. The idea is so absurd that I can't help wondering if I'm missing something!

Franz Grieser wrote:

First I thought it was an April 1st joke. But they seem to be serious
about it. And the comments on the page ...
OMG