Evernote has just announced that it is now engaged in a "massive infrastructure project" that will improve the writing, editing, and formatting experience of its users:

https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/22/the-future-of-writing-in-evernote/

My (slightly cynical) response is: Better late than never.

Yes, my response is similar - about time too! With the contemporary Evernote - which I can't entirely disentangle in my perception from the previous, and lamented by me, "tear-off-the-toilet-roll" Evernote - one constantly has the feeling that the infrastructure and investment could support something more useful.

However, alongside that feeling, there's also the sense that if the Evernote offering were to improve, there'd be significantly less room in the marketplace for some valued competitors.

I suspect this is a somewhat alarmed (and slightly belated) response to the new Apple Notes in iOS (and shortly in MacOS).

Not as flexible as Evernotes in some respects, but much more convenient.

Maybe I'm just getting old and rickety (not really, I'm only 59), but this is the part of the announcement that annoys and alarms me most:

"Beyond the fundamentals, it’ll open up new possibilities for what a note is and how you use and share it."

What?! A note is a note. This sounds like they are paving the way to new services I don't need or want.

Steve Z.

From the Evernote blog today: "Evernote’s strength is in its core: notes, sync, and search. That’s where we’re going to focus. Achieving that focus means making some difficult decisions. Today we let go of 47 people from the Evernote team and announced the closure of three of our global offices."

Either losing money or their next VC round wants better margins or both.

Maybe no more selling backpacks and socks.

Notes, Sync, Search: sounds like a pretty good focus.

Paul Korm wrote:

Either losing money or their next VC round wants better margins or both.

Maybe no more selling backpacks and socks.

Notes, Sync, Search: sounds like a pretty good focus.

Yep, marketing out-of-scope goods or services is seldom a good sign. Another "sell" sign for investors is often said to be building a new HQ. Apple...

Paul Korm wrote:

Either losing money or their next VC round wants better margins or both.

Have they ever been profitable?

It is hard to make money from "freemium" services - too many non-paying users to support.

Evernote has a lot of useless product tie-ins, but the one that makes me laugh is the dedicated Post-It Note "camera." Write out your Post-Its, then take photos of them with your PDA and import them into Evernote.

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

I can't believe they wasted any product development time on that piece of idiocy. No wonder they're laying people off.

What they should just do is charge a $10 subscription for what they now give-away free. Anyone not willing to pay $10 is probably not using Evernote much anyway.

[rant's end]
Steve Z.

As of extremely recently, there are now two free OS-native synced notetaking solutions: MS OneNote and the new Apple Notes app. Both of these have been expanded with new and improved functionality; but more importantly, both have been more deeply woven into the ecosystem of their respective OSes. Google is also toying with Keep for Android users, but their real challenger to Evernote has always been Google Docs/Drive.

Evernote came along with a pretty serviceable product when nobody else was bothering to make one. They were adequate when they didn't have any serious competition, but their core product has always been buggy, inconsistent, lacking in polish, failure-prone, and not especially elegant. Their support has been notoriously bad, even for paying users (which is a REALLY bad sign...).

I'm guessing that in 5-10 years, Evernote will turn into an B-school example of how to run a promising company right into the ground.

Or possibly sooner. Especially since - by a completely random chance - I've just discovered that Apple Notes does in fact support subfolders. From all the screenshots, fact that new folders always appear on the top level even if you create them by right-clicking on a folder, etc., I had assumed it didn't. But if you drag and drop a newly created folder to another folder: tada! Instant subfolder!

Well, I was quite excited, anyway...

zoe wrote:

I'm guessing that in 5-10 years, Evernote will turn into an B-school
example of how to run a promising company right into the ground.

Or an example of how you can't make up in volume what you lose on every sale. ;0)

Interesting analysis of what went wrong at Evernote: "The inside story of how $1 billion Evernote went from Silicon Valley darling to deep trouble"

http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10

Very interesting article.

Up above in this thread Steve Z. suggested charging everyone 10%. Even it they lost 90% of their users with a move like that (unlikely) their revenue would increase several multiples over the revenue reported in the Business Insider article.

The tech model "get big then monetize" is very difficult to do right.

WSP wrote:

Interesting analysis of what went wrong at Evernote: "The inside story
of how $1 billion Evernote went from Silicon Valley darling to deep
trouble"

http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10

Aaargh -- Steve suggested $10, not "10%". (Would be great if we could edit posts here.)

I thought for a moment we were discussing a tithe of 10 percent -- something like what Ben Carson has in mind for the federal tax!

We've touched upon Evernote's business model on various occasions at this forum; I think the first was this http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1236

In that discussion Neville Franks, developer of Surfulater and Clibu, drew our attention to an article by 37 Signals' Jason Fried: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1890-the-bar-for-success-in-our-industry-is-too-low

I find that article as timely as ever. The book Rework by Fried and his business partner David Hansson is also filled with sane business advice. My favourite: start a business, not a startup.

As an Evernote user since 2008, and a premium one shortly after, with more than 17.000 notes, I am very interested in Evernote being profitable. And I certainly get "Notes, Sync, Search". That's all I've ever done with Evernote, ignoring everything else.

Here are two more lengthy analyses of what went wrong at Evernote:

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

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-06/tech-unicorn-evernote-needs-to-turn-into-a-cockroach

My own experiences with Evernote have been decidedly mixed. I've relied heavily upon it for many years and at time even persuaded myself that I was fond of it, but it all took a nasty turn about twelve months ago when I bought a Surface Pro 3. I was panic-stricken to discover that Evernote simply wouldn't sync on that (otherwise wonderful) device. When I got in touch with the EN help desk, I received several perfunctory replies at weekly intervals that consisted entirely of cut-and-paste passages from EN's online help files (though I am a premium subscriber). Eventually the syncing began again in February, without explanation, when Evernote introduced yet another upgrade.

Since that hair-raising experience, I have been slowly and steadily moving my notes (nearly 23,300!) out of Evernote into OneNote, though I continue to use EN on a much smaller scale for some information that absolutely requires EN's superior tagging system.

Thanks for the tip about 'Rework', Alexander - I've just finished reading it and it acted as a very welcome perspective realignment tool!

I note, mind you, that 37signals have now focused entirely and exclusively on Basecamp, and have ditched or spun out all their other services. Interesting parallel to Evernote, perhaps...

WSP wrote:

Here are two more lengthy analyses of what went wrong at Evernote:

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

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-06/tech-unicorn-evernote-needs-to-turn-into-a-cockroach

My own experiences with Evernote have been decidedly mixed. I've relied
heavily upon it for many years and at time even persuaded myself that I
was fond of it, but it all took a nasty turn about twelve months ago
when I bought a Surface Pro 3. I was panic-stricken to discover that
Evernote simply wouldn't sync on that (otherwise wonderful) device. When
I got in touch with the EN help desk, I received several perfunctory
replies at weekly intervals that consisted entirely of cut-and-paste
passages from EN's online help files (though I am a premium subscriber).
Eventually the syncing began again in February, without explanation,
when Evernote introduced yet another upgrade.

Since that hair-raising experience, I have been slowly and steadily
moving my notes (nearly 23,300!) out of Evernote into OneNote, though I
continue to use EN on a much smaller scale for some information that
absolutely requires EN's superior tagging system.

Hmm, "unicorns". The term is almost an invitation to believe your own P.R. Now "cockroaches" - as someone at one time involved in several start-ups, where the goal was to achieve a lot with a little, I much prefer that.