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Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices

• dang 11y ago
  Url changed from http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9, which points to this.
  • caf 11y ago
    That article includes some pertinent information that's not in the blog posting, though (which offices are closing, one of the products that's being discontinued).
    • dang 11y ago
      I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner. We might have changed it back. It's often non-obvious what the right call is.
  • lampa 11y ago
    Have you try voogla? http://youtu.be/u-pBvs3PNIY http://youtu.be/u-pBvs3PNIY
• fwn 11y ago
  I wish they would ditch the business focus and return to plain old "remember everything". Who on earth needs features like "work chat"?
  • dasboth 11y ago
    Couldn't agree more. I remember when I first started using Evernote, the FAQs specifically said "you can't share your notes, that's not the point". Now it's all social and businessy, but I just want an easy and private way to organise my stuff!
    • gherkin0 11y ago
      > Couldn't agree more. I remember when I first started using Evernote, the FAQs specifically said "you can't share your notes, that's not the point". Now it's all social and businessy, but I just want an easy and private way to organise my stuff! This[1] article makes the point that they realized they needed business users to make money, and they were trying to appeal to them. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-unicorn-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...
  • adamb_ 11y ago
    Seconded. They pushed work chat pretty hard... Given what the CEO letter mentioned about product focus, I wonder if it's the employees that worked on that that are being let go
  • rhino369 11y ago
    >Who on earth needs features like "work chat"? They want to create a network effect to justify their valuation. Otherwise it's just a competitor to OneNote, and why is that worth a billion dollars.
  • tgb 11y ago
    Half the comments here are "you can't just be a 'feature' or you'll get replaced by google/apple/MS" and the other half are "why are they trying to expand beyond the core feature?" Makes me glad I'm no CEO.
• boxy310 11y ago
  I think why news of layoffs is so disconcerting is that it can be really, really hard to differentiate between what's fat and what's muscle in the business. A lot of "cost centers" like development end up meaning a lot to brand perceptions, which isn't valued correctly in the traditional P&L hierarchy and can have a significant time lag.
• egusa 11y ago
  businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-unicorn-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...
  • greenyoda 11y ago
    That article generated a lot of discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago, which can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218915 (Note: The BusinessInsider article was a re-publication of the original on syrah.co.)
    • joshdickson 11y ago
      thank you for noticing! we are currently back on HN with the Startup L. Jackson post so this was weird timing
  • dangero 11y ago
    I believe Groupon is the first dead Unicorn
    • hkmurakami 11y ago
      Groupon still has a $2.3B market cap. My vote is for Fab, which went from $1B to effectively $0.
    • therealarmen 11y ago
      The public markets [1] would disagree. [1] https://www.google.com/?q=GRPN https://www.google.com/?q=GRPN
      • streblo 11y ago
        How are you disagreeing? GRPN is at like 15% of where it opened.
    • 11y ago
• nealrs 11y ago
  You know what _really_ sucks about this? They're closing off the API & got rid of their evangelists.
  • tempestn 11y ago
    Do you have a source for that? Closing the API seems crazy, since if done right it should provide far more value at far less cost to the Evernote team than many other features. Will this mean that all the 'Share to Evernote' integrations from email clients and other apps will cease to function?
    • nkozyra 11y ago
      Open, developer-friendly APIs also have the ability to fragment core app usage. That could be a big motivator.
  • jkmcf 11y ago
    If they kill their API, this will probably be the end of Alternote...
  • matthewayne 11y ago
    Looks like the Evernote API is still open, alive, free and public: https://twitter.com/evernote_dev/status/650089211844890624 https://twitter.com/evernote_dev/status/650089211844890624 https://twitter.com/evernotehelps/status/650086523719671808 https://twitter.com/evernotehelps/status/650086523719671808
• barkingcat 11y ago
  Wow that's rough. Taiwan is in the middle of a Typhoon lashing. Hope the people in their Taiwan office is doing ok through this traumatic event - at a time when most would be relying on their business life to carry them through the physical disasters.
• tempestn 11y ago
  > Evernote’s strength is in its core: notes, sync, and search. That’s where we’re going to focus. Well, like many others, I've been wishing Evernote would drop all the auxiliary stuff and focus on their core product. Hopefully that's exactly what will now happen. Evernote has become an absolutely critical part of my life. Even though I use it for business (along with everything else) though, I have no use for the majority of the new features they've added over the past few years. Of course, not every feature will be useful to everyone, and just because I don't use something doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. However, when you see significant bugs languish for years while niche features get priority, it suggests a problem. I really hope this signifies a change in direction (as opposed to a milestone in the current, downward, one).
  • sandstrom 11y ago
    What is the auxiliary stuff that they've dropped? (or will drop/reduce emphasis on) Genuinely curious. I've noted that they seem to have multiple apps in the AppStore doing similar things.
    • mrmondo 11y ago
      I'm hoping they're dropping the idea of chat. Spending time on that really never made much sense me when their core product is so strong but badly needs some features to better align with modern tech trends such as improved plain text and markdown support.
      • craigching 11y ago
        > ... markdown support Yes, 1000 times yes! I so wish I could author in Evernote using markdown. Getting any sort of rich text done in a note is extremely cumbersome in Evernote, lists for instance.
        • mrmondo 11y ago
          Have you submitted it as a feature request to their support? I get the feeling they just don't have enough people asking for it.
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I know that it is the common vernacular, but you didn't let them go, you fired them. Surely they would prefer to not go and continue to pay their mortgage. I'm sure it wasn't easy to fire them, but don't try and make the situation rosey. The folks who decided on the direction of the company decided wrong and now they have to fire the people who executed those decision. Edit: Would you all prefer the word "Terminated"?
  • vruiz 11y ago
    Being laid off and being fired are not the same thing.
  • jmadsen 11y ago
    It's more than common vernacular in English. "Fired" implies wrong-doing on their part. "Laid off" or "let them go" means the company couldn't afford to pay them, or didn't need them anymore. It leaves no black mark against their name.
    • SilasX 11y ago
      Meh ... I just think the issue is just so sensitive that it moves through the euphemism treadmill a lot faster. When I was growing up, it felt like there was a clear distinction between "fired" (with cause) and "laid off" (bad revenues, can't afford you). But over time I increasingly saw people refer to all terminations as being "laid off". Then "let go" entered the fray, and I heard of recruiters who told people to refer to any for-cause firing as "being let go". Whatever term you use on this, people will abuse until it doesn't mean that anymore. They want to make it sound like any termination wasn't for-cause, while having plausible deniability if anyone calls them on it. And yes, I know the usual ivory tower lecture about "that's how language normally works!" But normally it's slow enough that you can reasonably infer what someone means because of mutual knowledge of what the words mean. Not here. And probably, not ever.
    • kasey_junk 11y ago
      I've always found it striking to note how laid off has migrated over time. When my grandfather got laid off, there was an expectation that he would come back to the same job with the same company some time in the near future. When I get laid off there is no expectation that my job will come back.
• vas1 11y ago
  I've tried evernote as a consumer and couldn't quite figure out where it fits between dropbox and other "cloud" providers such as gDrive and MSOffice 360. It seems like a smart move to focus on the features that are most useful to their core users instead of trying to be everything to everybody.
• drmarkrbaker 11y ago
  The real question is - will Chris O’Neill listen to what core paying users have been asking for with regard to keeping the basic application functional.
• on_ 11y ago
  Evernote is a note taking app in 2015. While slack and hipchat are somewhat iconoclastic, they have network affects and boost productivity. Evernote is competing with apple notes, google docs, whatever microsoft has, every password keeping app, a notebook, a text editor and using a blog. This is something that will likely happen to dropbox and box. You provide storage. Simple math will provide you with the cost of storage in 5 years and it is not a lot. Further, similar to evernote, it solved a problem that had a lot of friction and was novel a few years ago, but is standard now. Syncing. This is a default piece of all browsers, the 2 main operating systems win/os x, and comes standard on most phones. This is like the browser, you can have it for free so you stay in our ecosystem. Mega GIVES you 50GB of storage completely free NOW, and it is likely more secure. I don't know enterprise as well as I know consumer, but at some point I would imagine the choice is between buying a few SSDs and having an internal server, or setting up your own secure system via VPN. There can't be much room for this.
  • wrsh07 11y ago
    Dropbox must have many more corp customers than evernote, no?
    • on_ 11y ago
      I am sure. However, like evernote the difficult problem they solved several years ago is no longer difficult, but quite easy and become much more cheap. Couple that with security and privacy risks and the value proposition changes quickly. Maybe they are gearing up for a google merger or something. They are doing their mailbox app which looks cool and integrates storage and syncing. However, once again 1. Why would I use a mail client that only interfaces with gmail and outlook? 2. What is the point of the sync, this is default by most mail providers and clients? 3. Why would I want mail storage? I actually don't know what my mailbox limit is, but I certainly would not want to have the amount of .txt documents that could fill that up. Also, this is basic functionality. You can't pull me on your platform, google has the users you want and are better positioned, I still don't understand how you make money as a company.
      • 11y ago
• Animats 11y ago
  Ah, the death of a unicorn. The operational end is doing fine: "Our paid subscription growth is very strong and almost entirely organic; the number of new paid subscribers is 40% higher than this time last year." But the hype has faded, the $1bn valuation is down, and there's no greater fool available to fund them. This is a problem with too much funding. You have to pay off the investors, which requires rapid growth, which often requires buying market share at a loss.
• pbreit 11y ago
  Anyone know which offices? How many employees does Evernote have? Were layoffs mostly from closed offices? Edit: the Business Insider article (which maybe should be retained as the link?) has some of the information: 13% of workforce let go. Taiwan, Singapore, and Moscow offices closing. I couldn't tell if the 47 were from these offices mostly. I wouldn't think a note-taking app/website would need to be too dispersed around the world.
• chris-at 11y ago
  I was a big fan & paying customer of Evernote until they lost my data and then blamed me for syncing from two devices.
  • swagswag 11y ago
    same thing. even had the audacity to keep charging me
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • richev 11y ago
    I started out with Evernote, but had issues with multi-device sync (I think that when faced with anything that even remotely resembled a conflict it would just duplicate the note). Actually started using OneNote and have been very happy with it!
• nemomatic 11y ago
  Evernote's former CEO promised to focus on core features last year[0]. After 18 months with no improvements, the new CEO makes the same promise of focusing on core features. Seems like a sinking ship to me. [0] https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/01/04/on-software-quality/ https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/01/04/on-software-qualit...
• cag_ii 11y ago
  > This team has achieved three incredible feats: they’ve created one of the most important productivity tools in history... That's a very, very bold statement...
  • duderific 11y ago
    Yeah really, ease up there buddy. How about the steam engine, the cotton gin, the printing press, the computer, etc. I would argue more important than Evernote.
• AdmiralAsshat 11y ago
  Evernote feels like the Microsoft Office of the Notetaking world: it's huge, it's bloated, and it seems to be continuing to focus on stuff that the vast majority of its userbase will never use. At some point I installed Google Keep, which is lightweight, easy to use, and syncs, without feeling like I just installed an entire suite simply to jot down some quick notes.
  • favadi 11y ago
    Last time I tried Google Keep is too simple for my taste. It maybe a good todo list to post-it note maker, but not for permanently notes that have reference value.
• radiorental 11y ago
  From my perspective (as a UX'er). I'm seeing more and more projects & organisations need a 'vision' of what the product should be to help them focus product/feature efforts. There seems to be an underlying 'enabling' of superfluous dev effort due to the proliferation & ease of user of stacks/libraries/platforms.
  • InclinedPlane 11y ago
    More so, VC funding and the push to become highly valued (gotta win that unicorn lottery) drives scope and feature bloat. Every company has to grow, grow grow. Every product has to expand and scale up until it's everything to all people. Compare and contrast this with, say, craigslist, which still only has a few dozen employees. There's nothing wrong with keeping a product tightly scoped and keeping a business highly efficient and consistently profitable year after year, decade after decade. Maybe you don't get to ride the unicorn train, but maybe instead you get to work on something that you own (or own a big part of) and can enjoy your job consistently.
    • radiorental 11y ago
      You can still keep focus tight and do the unicorn thing. Snapchat comes to mind, there are plenty other examples.
• PretzelFisch 11y ago
  I wonder how effective their free to paid conversion is. I have never felt the need to move off the free account. I liked OneNote better but it didn't have the same reach as evernote at the time.
• Ensorceled 11y ago
  Maybe now they'll fix sync and iPhone editing? I've pretty much stopped using Evernote because the whole point was universally synced notes and todo lists but every time I would edit something on my iPhone I both had to deal with the formatting bugs in the iPhone editor AND the very high likelihood I'd end up with a "Conflicting Modifications" regardless of how many times I clicked sync. As a paying customer it's been very frustrating to see "business" features like note sharing and chat consuming valuable resources while the reason I bought the product, managing notes and todo lists, becomes increasing unusable.
• rdancer 11y ago
  "Making great products means making difficult decisions," says Evernote CEO Phil Libin. "Our choice was between great user experience, and new features. We are proud to announce that our next release will have many new and exciting features."
• sekasi 11y ago
  I've been a stalwart supporter of Evernote for quite some time now. I've pushed through when feeling like the platform got slower and slower as time went by. I pushed through when it felt like their focus was scattered, like the core offering was being surpassed by other platforms. Two months ago I pretty much decided 'ok you know what. This is it' after waiting for 25 seconds to get a note back that then turned out to be mysteriously 'missing'. It happens, right. I get it. And I got it back with some support. But the focus wasn't there, and the platform got old. Wind the clock back a year and a half (maybe two?) and Evernote was unstoppable compared to the competition. Now? It's stale. Slow. Predictable and uninspiring. While reading letters of layoffs is almost always a depressing thing, I sincerely hope that the 'focus' which they speak of is real. That everything, and I mean everything, gets dropped except making the core product as amazing as it once was. If they do that, I'll come back in a heartbeat. I'll come back with dollar bills. I got faith Evernote. Come back to the light.
• myth_buster 11y ago
  The first two charts in the "Growth" section has significantly different scaling!
• mhartl 11y ago
  Ah, this explains all the notifications I've been getting trying to get me to go premium. Not that it's a big deal—I can't blame them for trying to monetize—but I had noticed they'd gotten a lot more aggressive lately.
• rcarmo 11y ago
  I switched to OneNote very recently, and the biggest reason was that I was fundamentally fed up with all the extraneous features: http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2015/08/16/1800#onenote-to-rule-them-all http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2015/08/16/1800#onenote-to-ru...
• tuscarok 11y ago
  Issues I had with Evernote which made me switch to Trello: * Rubbish font handling and formatting * Superfluous functionality when it doesn't get the important things right * The new beta interface doesn't give you a nice general overview of your notes. I preferred the old interface.
• shostack 11y ago
  Is there a solid way to type/paste code and format it properly in Evernote finally? Last I checked that was near impossible despite it being a largely solved problem in every other text input service out there (Slack, forums, StackExchange, etc.).
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  what's evernote again? I keep hearing about it but never seen it or have used it.
  • Nursie 11y ago
    Something that came pre-installed on my last phone and couldn't be removed, and obnoxiously kept updating itself and asking for more permissions. No idea what it does, that annoyed me too much to ever find out.
    • curiousjorge 11y ago
      that explains it. I feel like a lot of these startup companies cater to SV because outside of SV people are completely unaware or unappreciative (doesn't see any disruption in note taking move along). Makes me wonder how many SV unicorns will flop next year. My prediction is Twitter and Hoosuite.
      • Pxtl 11y ago
        Twitter? The media darling twitter, that is used by every celebrity, artist and PR person? Of course not.
• kristofferR 11y ago
  Alternote is what the official Evernote client should been. It's the only thing that keeps me on Evernote, since the official client is horrible and slow. Let's hope Evernote stops messing around with useless features like "Work Chat" and start improving their clients instead. It's kinda silly that a third party can make a client vastly better and more pleasant to use than the official one. http://alternoteapp.com/ http://alternoteapp.com/
• jason_slack 11y ago
  I was an Evernote Premium customer and enjoyed multi-device syncing and private notebooks. I had my own account, paid for out of my own pocket for a year. The company I worked for also decided to used Evernote and I could see our "Team" notebooks, right along with my stuff. When the company stopped using it, not only did I lose the "Team" notebooks, it took all of my personal data with it. I lost everything. Support acknowledged it was a bug and told me that there was nothing they could do. They didn't even offer to let me have a few months free to catch back up and re-create my notebooks.
  • alanh 11y ago
    Once my Evernote underwent a dramatic sync error, resulting in duplicates of all my notes. Evernote support's only help was to suggest I use Time Machine to recreate my notebook. They couldn't move the notebook back in time or anything like that.
  • rsync 11y ago
    That is incredible. I'm sorry that behavior like that exists and that service providers can be so terrible at what they do. It also sounds like an implied admission, on the part of evernote, of not having working backups ? I would think that they would have found some way any way to get your data back to you given what just happened.
    • ma2rten 11y ago
      That might just mean that they delete all backups when the account gets deleted for privacy reasons.
      • yabatopia 11y ago
        That's why I create backups of my Evernote databases regularly. You never know.
      • tedunangst 11y ago
        Depending on the backup tech, that can be kind of difficult. I can't run arbitrary SQL against the database backups I've got stored in tarsnap. Nor against tape, etc. For that matter, isn't the (or one) reason for having a backup so that errant deletes don't obliterate everything?
• motti 11y ago
  I've founded a startup that wants to tackle the digital notebook and save-for-later problem, for any content - not just web stuff. What's your wish list for your ideal notebook?
  • dexterdog 11y ago
    I like something that I can buy and host myself so that when the over-valued company decides to stop making it I can still use it. Then again, I'm probably not a target user base for somebody looking for the next big thing.
    • dmfdmf 11y ago
      That's funny because when Evernote got... flaky... I started to think about self-hosting a Wordpress and wiki server for my notes.
    • laurent123456 11y ago
      I thought many times about building this kind of self-hosting note taking app, but what's stopping me is that it's not very useful without all the mobile and desktop clients, and that's very hard to develop. That's probably the reason why there's currently no good open source solution for this.
      • apostrophedave 11y ago
        tagSpaces does a fairly decent job of it. its only missing a few hundred features compared to evernote but its mainly just one guy making it for the last few years so its fairly impressive at the same time. hopefully more features will be added eventually like a proper tagging system and stuff like note links, better search etc.
  • lukefreiler 11y ago
    Flexible structure (notebooks > sub-notebooks > notes), notebook level encryption, real-time sync, widely cross-platform, images (with light annotation), markdown editing, zoom text (cmd/ctr-+), light-weight/fast, fantastic search, no tags. I'd like to share a notebook or make a note public, no chat. I will pay anything.
• metral 11y ago
  I personally struggle with Evernote - not in the utilization aspect as I use it multiple times a week, but rather, on its lack of focus on addressing & fixing the features its users really need & want: i.e code formatting, inconsistencies between formats across mobile, web & app, and oddities when copying/pasting content into notes & it breaking the rest of the note are just some of the minor issues I personally struggle with. Features such as presentation mode and larger transfer size are fine and all, but neither of which I personally care for - I primarily take text notes and have some images embedded here and there, so I'm not necessarily asking for a major shift in features. I want to find reasons to pay for Evernote as I depend on it so much from a notebook aspect, but alas, I haven't been convinced that they necessarily care about addressing these pain points.
• lemiffe 11y ago
  Just started using Evernote after a coworker shared a note with me the other day. After years of using notepad, notepad++, sublime text, and now atom, I feel like the plaintext experience is severely lacking. Select all the text in a note, mark as plain text, copy something from any site, paste, formatting is ignored. Paste with source formatting should be the exception, not the norm. The lack of headers and other basic formatting options is also frustrating. Wordpress does a better job with it's editor... and it's a web app!
• dmritard96 11y ago
  So what is are you paying for at evernote that you cant get (or get well) elsewhere. I haven't used it myself for more than a few minutes and didn't see it but obviously there is something there. Curious to understand what exactly that is?
  • yabatopia 11y ago
    I use it for everything I want to remember, on all the different platforms I use, stored in one place and easily retrievable. Interesting articles, web pages, quotes, network settings, mails, recipes, shopping lists, to-do lists, pictures... It's available on Android, iOS, Windows, in different browsers, in different apps or software. Everything is searchable, even images thanks to OCR. And I can keep a local copy of my data. Once you're hooked, you just keep using it, like extended memory.
• symstym 11y ago
  Long ago I got tired of Evernote's bugs and creep of extraneous features and switched to Workflowy [1] for the majority of my general (plaintext) note-taking. I love Workflowy and can't imagine life without it. [1] https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/
  • dasil003 11y ago
    Workflowy is a really really cool tool. It totally hits the sweet spot for the way I conduct my day to day work in terms of a todo list which is infinitely nestable, but also focusable, so I can keep track of where I am even on a long yak-shave. I don't really like it for free-form text since it is list-oriented, but it's taken a surprising chunk out of what I used to keep in nvALT and OmniFocus.
  • paradite 11y ago
    Just tried it and it looks really cool. I wonder why I haven't heard of it before.
  • jay_kyburz 11y ago
    Serious question. If you are just making plaintext notes how come you are not just using your text editor of choice? Vim, Emacs, Sublime, Atom etc etc
    • saturdaysaint 11y ago
      I use Workflowy for easy cloud synchronization, great mobile apps (so I can quickly pull up a shopping list I created at my work PC) and generally the way the "infinite outline" model suits my mental organization. I'd be genuinely curious to the extent that some/all of these could meet some/all of these requirement, but Workflowy is so well designed and completely reliable that I haven't been particularly tempted to look around.
    • thanatropism 11y ago
      This is why all my App Store purchases of late have been text editors with Markdown and Dropbox support. Seriously: I have three text editors in the lower four icons of my iPad (four if the ssh client counts): one to have the important work thing open (Editorial), another with my personal note folder (1Write) and yet another for just typing text quickly (iA Writer), jotting quick lists, etc. The "office girlfriend" will often grab my iPad during a meeting to tell me something in private or start writing down notes, and she knows she's only allowed to open the third one. Startup-er folk: pay attention to "enhanced Markdown editors" like Editorial (good inline preview) and 1Write (decent to see an entire folder at once, much like the Evernote UI), not to mention the "todo.txt" category. Make comparable desktop clients (so I don't have to muck about in Sublime Text or Notepad++ trying to reproduce the folder view situation). Sell the world the beauty of plain text, including budding formats like todo.txt and the kind of YAML+markdown that static blog generators use. (When I was young and very abstract/naïve, I dreamed of starting a company to sell custom DSLs. But this is the next best thing: develop text-based DSLs for tagging, todo lists, meeting notes, etc -- readable-but-standardisable standards like Markdown. Make great UIs, make them multi platform.)
• encoderer 11y ago
  Why did they have so many offices?
  • johannes1234321 11y ago
    "The three offices that closed were in Taiwan, Singapore, and Moscow, according to a company spokeswoman. While the Moscow office was more development-focused, the other two were concentrated on sales and marketing. All of its Asian operations will be relocated to Seoul, South Korea, although it will maintain an office in China." http://uk.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9?r=US&IR=T http://uk.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9?r=US&I... Mind that "an office" can be only one or two persons doing some local marketing work or do some specific feature implementation.
• onedev 11y ago
  Do they really have a "Go Premium" CTA at the end of this blog? Wow.
• dghughes 11y ago
  I wonder if this is why I saw so many notifications from Evernote lately for me to verify my e-mail address trying to churn up some apathetic users?
• djhn 11y ago
  In the last 5 years I've accumulated some 8 000 notes in Evernote, which I would love to move to a safer platform/format in light of recent evidence of data loss and speculation concerning Evernote's longevity. What are the alternatives to organizing this second brain/memory? 50% are < 1000 words long texts written by me, transcribed from an audio/video/paper source or saved/clipped/copypasted from elsewhere 20% complete webpages or complete articles deemed important enough to save a copy for later 10% graphics, annotated images and PDFs 10% oneliners and quotes 10% todo-lists, task lists, shopping lists, etc. Every new piece of information I have been exposed to and deemed important enough to return to later has gone into my Evernote inbox, from where it would be weekly sorted into an appropriate notebook by subject, life area, etc. Most important ones are tagged for regular review. Everything else gets some regular dedicated random browsing time, and is often discovered in research when preparing presentations, writing or thinking about any particular topic. There are 80+ notebooks in 10 sections. Organizing this corpus efficiently and engaging with it with an appropriate interface would effectively be a multiplier for the ability to utilize knowledge and experience. Interacting with such data accumulated over decades through a combined voice assistant / mind map / dashboard / big screen (Microsoft Surface style) is a futuristic idea of knowledge work - the only question is whether there is a large enough consumer user base for such an infovore/generalist/researcher approach to information.
  • vskarine 11y ago
    In my opinion OneNote is by far better than anything else out there.
  • dctoedt 11y ago
    See the "OneNote Bulk" Evernote-to-OneNote migration utility mentioned at http://www.thetechchat.com/2014/09/05/how-to-convert-notes-from-evernote-to-onenote/ http://www.thetechchat.com/2014/09/05/how-to-convert-notes-f... EDIT 1: PayPal and LinkedIn indicate that the migration app's developer is in China. [1] That initially gave me pause about using the app --- who knows where my information might end up? --- but then I'm guessing that Chinese hackers seeking to steal confidential information aren't likely to be so open about being in China, nor to charge $30 for the app. (Of course, that too could all be part of the evil hackers' cover story, right?) EDIT 2: I just used the app to migrate 6,500-plus notes from Evernote to OneNote as a test. It seemed to work flawlessly. (My suggestion is to use Evernote's export facility on each EN notebook in turn to create a separate export file; then set up OneNote sections corresponding to each EN Notebook; then use the OneNote Bulk app to import each EN notebook's export file into the corresponding ON section.) I'm still pondering whether to make a permanent switch. [1] https://cn.linkedin.com/pub/james-linton/50/82/9a https://cn.linkedin.com/pub/james-linton/50/82/9a
• deleted 11y ago
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• vskarine 11y ago
  "Evernote, The First Dead Unicorn" https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55e1beac15970d6c01395d9d https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55e1beac15970d6c01395d9d
  • joshdickson 11y ago
    great article! ;)
    • Flenser 11y ago
      (Sorry for posting off-topic but I know you wrote the syrah platform and I can't find an email address for you) Could you please remove this bit of CSS. I'd like to be able to see my scrollbar: body::-webkit-scrollbar { width: 0!important; }
      • mahouse 11y ago
        lol seriously. What crosses your head when you just remove the scrollbar?
• methehack 11y ago
  If anyone is looking for a possible alternative for notetaking that is not OneNote, I like nvAlt: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/ I have exported from evernote and moved to nvAlt and gone back again... It takes a little work to set it up to sync to mobile but it is doable with dropbox. It does not have the same 'notebook' concept that evernote does, but that might not matter to you.
• reuven 11y ago
  I'm a very casual Evernote user; I only use the free version, every few months, to sync basic things (e.g., shopping lists, or directions) between my desktop and phone. A few months ago, I noticed that there were suddenly lots of ads within Evernote, encouraging me to upgrade to the paid version. I'm not complaining, since they need to make money, but it did strike me as being more aggressive than before. Now I understand what was (is) happening.
  • hamxiaoz 11y ago
    I have the same feeling with you at the moment(s) every time I open Evernote it prompts to ask you to upgrade.
• sown 11y ago
  I wonder if this is a prelude to some acquisition or merger to make the company more sellable.
• inthewoods 11y ago
  A bit surprised no one has mentioned SimpleNote (www.simplenote.com) - a stripped down note taking service.
  • apostrophedave 11y ago
    i dont know what the financial situation is with simplenote or how it works but after the whole springpad thing im not in any rush to get into bed with some service that might not be around in a few years.
    • inthewoods 11y ago
      It's a fair point - I'm going to wait to see how Notes syncing works with iCloud on Mac/iPhone but that is most definitely not an open solution. To date I've used Google Keep and Google Docs.
• meepadock 11y ago
  I'm a long-time evernote premium customer who is saddened but not even slightly surprised by this. I firmly believe that Evernote raised too much money, at far too high of a valuation, and they fucked themselves. They did not have the product and market to justify a $1B valuation. They just didn't. They bet huge on their ability to invent whole new markets that sound like they're related to evernote, but aren't, really. And unsurprisingly, that didn't pan out. Now the core product has been stagnant for years; gaining "features" like work chat which were clearly dreamt up in a silo, completely disconnected from the market's needs. And now the troops will pay for management's complete and total fucking incompetence. And yes, I know one CEO is gone, but the new CEO is an absolute fucking joke as well. And long-time customers like me... we keep hoping that OneNote or some similar product will add an "Import from Evernote" button. So that we can escape this mismanaged, formerly great product.
  • erobbins 11y ago
    Why do you say the new CEO is a joke? Just curious.. he hasn't been around long enough to pass judgement on, I wouldn't think?
  • allengeorge 11y ago
    Why do you say the new CEO is a joke? Incidentally, speaking of recent changes - one thing I have noticed over the past few months are constant reminders and emails to "Upgrade to Premium". I wonder if this was the immediate focus of the new CEO: to convert free customers to paying. After all, an important point was stressed in the CEO's letter - that their paying subscriber count has increased by 40% YOY.
• crymer11 11y ago
  If I could find something that did image and PDF OCR as well as Evernote, I'd probably migrate, but for now, I'll risk the data loss for the ability to search everything so easily. I certainly welcome recommendations though.
• Spooky23 11y ago
  The only thing I use Evernote for is for indexing research that I do for work. I got burned early with their tool for writing, but it was still compelling for that use case. The tagging & search is fast, their web clipper is best in class and annotation capability works great. But there's a cost. I don't like having years of information stuck in an app that makes it very difficult to extract. My guess is if the new corporate direction is to monetize/nickel&dime, I'll take on the lift to moving. I can get 90% of the functionality that I need in the native OS X filesystem with spotlight comments and little helper apps, and I have a work Mac now.
  • WaltPurvis 11y ago
    > I don't like having years of information stuck in an app that makes it very difficult to extract. Why do you say it's difficult to extract? You can select one, several, or all of the notes in a notebook and export them in either HTML or XML format, with all metadata (tags, etc.) and embedded media included. That seems pretty good to me, and it's certainly easy. If you wanted something more sophisticated, Evernote on the Mac has exceptionally complete support for AppleScript, so you can code up whatever kind of fancy extraction you need. I'm not asking to be argumentative; I've always considered Evernote's support for extracting data to be pretty darn good, and clearly superior to many competitive apps/services, so I'm curious to know what additional functionality you would require before you'd say it's not "very difficult" to extract your information.
• dctoedt 11y ago
  For those looking for an Evernote-to-OneNote migration utility, see my comment in this thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301284 --- it seems to work fine.
• virtuabhi 11y ago
  I have recently moved to Quiver. Its user interface is very similar to Evernote. But it has support for Latex, code highlighting, and markdown! In addition, you can specify the location of library as a Dropbox folder, where data is written in JSON. Here is the data format https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki/Quiver-Data-Format Lack of Latex support, being able to export raw data easily, and long startup time which renders notes unaccessible are my three problems with Evernote. These problems don't exist with Quiver. http://happenapps.com/#quiver http://happenapps.com/#quiver PS no relationship with either Quiver or Evernote
  • hobo_mark 11y ago
    It looks exacly like the kind of tool I have been looking for for years, albeit for linux/windows
    • noir_lord 11y ago
      http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/ http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/ I've used it for a couple of years, it's excellent and insanely quick once you learn all the keys plus you can just dump the database to Dropbox and have easy syncing. No mobile client so I use other stuff for that (Wunderlist is my favourite on Android) but for work stuff/projects it's spot on.
• Justin_K 11y ago
  Bullet lists - I literally left this app for One Note because Evernote COULD NOT properly handle bullet lists. The following is not my post but as of my time of leaving the app, you STILL couldn't properly manage a bullet list. There are dozens of posts asking for bullet lists to be fixed. I used 5% of the overall features - all I want is to take notes and have them indexed. There was so much bloat and I couldn't make a proper bullet list, so I had no choice to switch. I never understood why people paid for this app. https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67060-list-functionality-such-as-bullets-and-numbers-are-a-categorical-nightmare/ https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67060-list-functionali...
  • ericax 11y ago
    For indexed bullet list you should try Dynalist, demo here: https://dynalist.io/demo https://dynalist.io/demo
• ulfw 11y ago
  And so it begins...
• neya 11y ago
  The problem with Evernote is with the way they treat data. I found a really interesting guide hosted on Evernote[1] and I tried to download it. But no, I couldn't, because, they took the pains to block someone from downloading their notebooks and made my life so difficult in the end that I not only gave up on the conversion, but also stopped being their customer. I couldn't even print the damn thing! Ironically, they called it a shared notebook. What a joke! I refuse to stop paying for any service that doesn't believe in open sharing through widely accepted/popular formats. The internet is alive today only because people believe in sharing information, not holding it back behind such a walled garden. I refuse to support such companies. Not in 2015 atleast. [1]This is the notebook in question and mind you, it's a "Shared" notebook: https://www.evernote.com/pub/contentblueprint/thecontentmarketingblueprint https://www.evernote.com/pub/contentblueprint/thecontentmark... Ever since I left Evernote, I created a private Wordpress blog and used their sharing bookmark to store notes, snippets and everything else. I also use Google docs and Apple Notes app for other kinds of data and it has served me well. I understand this wouldn't fit everyone's bill, but it definitely fit mine. So, adios Evernote! Hope someone replaces you soon!
  • icc97 11y ago
    > I refuse to stop paying I'm not sure you meant that
    • neya 11y ago
      Hah! You got me :) I meant the opposite, thanks for pointing out!
  • 5555624 11y ago
    If you've got an Evernote account, rename that notebook and sync your account. I clicked on the above link, renamed it, then synced in the desktop app. It was now my notebook. I then was able to export it. (That said, I'm leaving Evernote.)
    • neya 11y ago
      Thanks for the tip!
• qyv 11y ago
  I cannot help but think about the article last week about WhatsApp needing only 50 engineers for over 900M users. Evernote just let go that many people and their software is bug-ridden next to WhatsApp. Seriously, what do all of these engineers do?
• TurboHaskal 11y ago
  I used to be a customer for a while. Then went with org-mode + git and never looked back.
  • jansc 11y ago
    Interesting. I used both Evernote and DEVONthink on OS X before. Now, I'm storing all my notes in plain text org-files on my Dropbox - but without version control. Do you share your git-repos via Dropbox or somethink like that? Or do you have a git server somewhere else?
    • TurboHaskal 11y ago
      I simply use a private Bitbucket repo and my commits are mere lazy timestamps. Nothing fancy.
    • Semiapies 11y ago
      I've been using org-mode and git myself. I've used the bundle command to back up repositories in Dropbox, but for things I want to use on multiple computers, I set up an account on BitBucket and just push and pull my changes.
• Kiro 11y ago
  I would gladly pay for Everynote Premium if they had automatic backups. Why isn't this an option? I just want to be sure my stuff never disappears, regardless.
• ivanb 11y ago
  IMHO Evernote is feature complete. It would be great if the company for a while switched focus from growth to support and just collected revenue. However who knows maybe revenue is not their goal and they just wait to be bought by Facebook. Btw does anyone remember this article? https://www.fastcompany.com/3012870/dialed/evernotes-quest-to-become-a-100-year-old-startup https://www.fastcompany.com/3012870/dialed/evernotes-quest-t... Have they changed their mind yet?
• suryon 11y ago
  The software needs to become more expensive and companies like google need to die. I have nothing against open source if it is not a complete product. But opensource can hardly pay for itself or make you "rich". "Stupid" companies taught people that software must be free and can by paid for itself by people's personal information. Good software is expensive.
• noyesno 11y ago
  I'm a long time Evernote user (I think I got an email stating I was in the first 3k users) but I'm also seriously considering migrating away to something else. My company is moving to Office365 and with that I've been exposed to OneNote and it looks like a good alternative (though the lack of a Linux client is a big problem). The other note-capture tool that I've used religiously is "The Brain"[0], it's great for bookmarking and visualizing relationships (I even use it as my address book for contacts), it handles notes, links to files and URLs and can be synced with Dropbox or via their own cloud service. [0] http://www.thebrain.com/ http://www.thebrain.com/
• porker 11y ago
  Hopefully we will now see some competition in this space, rather than "Evernote" being the answer to "Why aren't you launching?". Though given their finances, I suspect not... https://transpose.com https://transpose.com is an interesting start, but needs a big cash injection to make it better - and suffers from data lock-in again.
• rajadigopula 11y ago
  I am a premium member and I stopped using Evernote when I understood how their versioning works! Seriously, they should rename it to regular backups at 8hr intervals.
• apricot13 11y ago
  the only thing that keeps me using evernote is the ability to forward emails to it and then merge similar ones. If something else did that I would swap in a heart beat and for my other notes I'd convert them to google docs.
• geff82 11y ago
  ...and then there came OneNote and syncing was even better, features even more, collaboration best, and it was free and I started using it and soon after I never accessed Evernote again. And many, formerly hot loving Evernote fans in my peer group changed, too.
• tlogan 11y ago
  The problem with Evernote is they lack vision. Or maybe focus. Not sure which one. I understand selling socks makes money but ... I was under impression that Evernote will evolve into something like RealTime+Word+Powerpoint - but no :( I think Evernote is done. They lost their mojo and there is no way to get it back :(
• risratorn 11y ago
  I've had a love/hate relationship with evernote since forever. The idea of storing everything in evernote really appeals to me (invoices, receipts, warranty, contracts, ...) but yet scares me too since there are wild stories of evernote just loosing stuff. On the other hand for simple note taking evernote really sucks, it's too cluttered and it's editor is subpar. A few years ago I was an avid springpad user before they shut down, but they suffered from the same issues: too bloated, not really good editor. But it worked beter for me than evernote. To me it feels like evernote tries to solve 2 separate problems: taking simple and small notes, archiving and indexing important documents. Unfortunately it fails at both for me :(
• codecamper 11y ago
  I used Evernote for a few weeks & it lost a bunch of my work. I can't believe they are still around.
• bvrlt 11y ago
  Anyone knows which non-core features will be affected by this? Evernote Food was already shut down (https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/16/better-brainstorms-with-scannables-newest-update/ https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/16/better-brainstorms...) a couple weeks ago.
• enibundo 11y ago
  I was thinking to get an account (free one), but after reading many "negative" comments I'm rethinking it. Will probably give it a try anyways... At the moment I'm only using it as a FF plugin for "cleaning up" blog posts.
• rickomegan 11y ago
  It's worth noting that even after letting 47 people go, they have positions open on their careers page. New CEO trying to make his mark by dealing out a bit of worry to the underlings.
  • allengeorge 11y ago
    It is possible to reduce employees in one area while hiring in another (after all, your company's focus may have changed). These two events are not mutually exclusive. After all, they're not reducing their workforce by...10%, maybe more?...because they're losing money hand-over-fist.
• nowprovision 11y ago
  I almost got used to the old interface, it was pretty much the same for 7 years so I had plenty of time, the new one introduced this year I can't seem to adapt to. What were all those employees actually doing? A blessing in disguise is that this made me find an alternative which was trusty Atlassian Bitbucket, along with their free private repos each can be accompanied with a markdown tolerant wiki, sure it's not quite the same but as a developer notepad bitbucket wiki has worked out quite well. The latest news just locks me further into migrating all remaining bits from evernote, then again if the 47 employees let go were responsible for web client new material UI (there is no support linux client) and the remaining employees rollback and want to do as little innovation as they did between 2008-2014 then perhaps I'll reconsider
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• dendory 11y ago
  I rely heavily on Evernote. I actually thought about making my own notes system before, but the native apps and doing synch right is a hard thing to do, especially when talking about a complex system of notebooks, notes, tags, file attachments, search, etc. You don't get that with a file system.
• ogezi 11y ago
  And the death of the unicorns begins
• andy_ppp 11y ago
  I thought it was weird that Springpad, a much better alternative to Evernote just randomly gave up. Maybe note taking apps just have no money in them?
• dragon88 11y ago
  Does anyone know an online doc editor like Google Docs but one that lets you create sections within the doc and move them around? I write a lot of articles and I have to constantly rearrange sections to achieve a better flow. It's getting annoying to constantly copy and paste chunks of text to move them around.
  • redwood 11y ago
    great question. Also similar I have been seeking an equivalent online docs product with built-in flows from draft to review to approved
• greyman 11y ago
  I am also worried that Evernote didn't innovate in the recent years, but I still consider it a best notetaking application on Windows. (and I tried several others like ResophNotes, Onenote, etc). I can quickly add new note by clicking on tray icon or by global shortcut, filter notes by tag, and Search is also spontaneous.
• Pxtl 11y ago
  I use evernote for shopping lists and logging my workouts - not exactly mission-critical stuff. It is buggy and I frequently find my last amendment reverted. I cannot imagine using it professionally.
• sneezeplease 11y ago
  No surprise, their service is nothing more than what basic blockchain technology will provide in a few years
• jayonsoftware 11y ago
  I used to be a evernote user for a long time then last year moved to OneNote, OneNote has come a long way.
• jackgavigan 11y ago
  I reckon Evernote would be good bolt-on for a cloud collaboration company like Huddle or Box. The problem is that it's not worth $1bn to a company like that, so any acquisition would result in a paper loss for those who invested at a $1bn valuation (not to mention the founders and employees who would probably get screwed by liquidation preferences).
• outworlder 11y ago
  > I joined Evernote as CEO two months ago > Today we let go of 47 people from the Evernote team and announced the closure of three of our global offices. We are grateful for the immense contributions of each and every affected person. So, new CEO gets appointed and starts torching the place. I suppose that will help the bottom line short term. But I'd really like to see the number of resignations in the next days.
• dpc_pw 11y ago
  For people looking for replacement ideas: I use Zim + Syncthing. Works on my Linux machines, and Android app works OK.
• hamxiaoz 11y ago
  - The Windows version sucks: I have a really long note and now I cannot open it, the whole program just crashes. - The Mac version is OK. Still running fine. - The Web version looks cleaner, but it doesn't have a highlight tool??!! Another major complain is that it's really difficult to store code in a note. I started using [WizNote](http://www.wiznote.com/ http://www.wiznote.com/) recently and it seems really good: markdown, free, multiple directory support, comments, etc