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Evernote is a note taking app in 2015. While slack and hipchat are somewhat iconoclastic, they have network affects and boost productivity. Evernote is competin
by 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 agoDropbox must have many more corp customers than evernote, no?
- on_ 11y agoI 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.
- dasil003 11y agoWhen did file sync become easy? I agree it's become commonplace with Google Drive and iCloud bringing respectable implementations to market, but I think it's still far from easy.
- podgib 11y agoIt's easy from a consumer point of view in the sense that it's readily available and easy to set up. The fact that it is still technically difficult to set up from scratch doesn't matter to consumers (or businesses) when there are multiple providers that hide that complexity for the end user. Hence Dropbox no longer has a competitive advantage from having produced a solid solution to a difficult problem.
- dasil003 11y agoRight, except the stories of data loss are an order of magnitude more common with Google Drive and iCloud compared to Dropbox, so even though at the surface level it may be a classic market for lemons, I still think Dropbox has a competitive advantage based on their reputation.
- jcrawfordor 11y agoMicrosoft has OneNote, which might be a good cautionary tale in this area. OneNote was once the king of note taking, like back in 2003, and it's still a great product. But Microsoft focused too much on the Business market, I think, dropping OneNote from the Office Home packages, and that kind of killed it outside of the corp world.
- cheshire137 11y agoIsn't OneNote still popular in education, like students taking notes in class?
- irl_zebra 11y agoIt is, and is integrated well with the Surface and the Surface pen. Works great for taking handwritten (or typed) notes and having it sync to my phone/desktop immediately. I use it often to take notes at meetings then I am able to send all the notes/diagrams to others in pdf form when I get back to my workstation. Big fan of OneNote.
- everly 11y agoI was totally unaware of OneNote until it came with Windows 7 Enterprise at my first corporate job. I couldn't believe how great it was (at least on desktop), but I was too deep into Evernote by that point to make the switch.
- JBiserkov 11y agoHow do you mean? According to Wikipedia OneNote was launched in 2003, and has been part of the Home and Student editions of Office 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016.
- douche 11y agoI've only really known about OneNote since it came bundled with Windows 8/on the Surface RT I got at work. It seems like a fairly good product, although I really only use it for bookmarking tabs that Chrome seems to lose when it crashes/updates itself and nukes the "recently closed tabs" list.
- 11y ago
- kitsunesoba 11y agoI think that a single-purpose app or service can survive in a world full of multi-featured competitors, but it needs to be insanely good at what it does in order to do so. Evernote is not insanely good at notetaking, and therein lies the problem.
- edanm 11y agoAgreed, but it is insanely better than anything else I've ever tried. (I haven't tried that many things, but really I don't know of any decent competitor that runs well on multiple platforms, and does the basic things I need - which is text notes, other file types, and ability to tag and put into a notebook. And on a native app).
- volaski 11y agoYour thesis is correct (single purpose app can survive in a world full of multi-featured competitors by being insanely good at one thing). But I disagree with your interpretation. Evernote is THE multi-featured competitor in notetaking arena. It does too many things, each of them in mediocre manner. Then comes all the "single-purpose apps that are insanely good at one thing only" which disrupt Evernote. Think of Instapaper (Saving webpages), Simplenote (Text syncing), All kinds of TODO apps, they all are good at one thing and do it well. That's why Evernote is not doing well.
- skimpycompiler 11y agoMEGA might not be safe anymore. Kim Dotcom doesn't work there, there was a hostile takeover.