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Can someone explain the notion hype to me? On producthunt atleast one notion-related product makes it to the frontpage each day. I tried it out multiple times

Can someone explain the notion hype to me? On producthunt atleast one notion-related product makes it to the frontpage each day. I tried it out multiple times and to me it looked like a markdown editor with templates and sharing. Is that really such a breakthrough? Don't evernote etc. do the same?

submeta 5y ago
My guess is they spend a ton of money to promote their product. Many influencers on Youtube (adressing students) make several promoted videos a month (!) about how to use Notion. They have a ton of money to spend. Their latest valuation was ten billions, and they raised > 100m money. I also feel like they have a ton of (paid) ambassadors promoting the product aggressively on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms. It‘s a decent product, reminds me of Confluence, but with easy setup. Search is their biggest problem. You hit Command+P, open the universal search window, type something and wait literally seconds before something shows up.
- polote 5y ago
  I would be surprised they pay people when so many people are willing to talk about Notion for free. So yeah they started hiring Notion ambassadors (and paying them) recently, but much of the growth they had was without paying. I think they never paid for an ad, they only have a handful of people working in marketing, about 5 according to Linkedin. The reality is people who love Notion want to shout it everywhere and as a result you see content about Notion everywhere
OJFord 5y ago
I'm not going to claim it's revolutionary (and I don't know how much 'hype' there is because I don't follow stuff like ProductHunt) but it is more than that - it's a sort of recursive database table where every page is an entry, and you can view the page itself or various views (literally a table, or kanban for example, filtered, sorted) on the table. Or make a page containing a view on the table. Markdown editor is roughly what you get for free, but then there's the flexibility to build within it: kanban system with custom fields, CMS for a blog, etc. It's part of 'no-code' (although you can script formulaic fields derived from others) hype I suppose. Edit: I've just seen logseq.github.io via another comment, which looks great and probably clearer (to an HN user) why it's good and what you can do with it. Notion then is like a closed-source proprietary-format logseq, that's easier to use for, and targetting, a broader audience.
- makapuf 5y ago
  A modern Lotus Notes comes to mind...
polote 5y ago
> Is that really such a breakthrough? Don't evernote etc. do the same? Yeah it's the hype, today Notion is the go to tool for PKM, the same Evernote used to be a few years ago and the same others used to be before Evernote. For some weird reason people prefer to all use the same product, and instead of having a bunch of users on Evernote, a bunch on Notion, a bunch on Roam, a bunch on others. They all migrate to the current hot tool Whether it's Evernote or Notion, they are great products, but nothing revolutionary. The major difference between Evernote and Notion is that Notion has managed to get a good chunk of their revenue from companies. This should make them more durable.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
  > For some weird reason people prefer to all use the same product, and instead of having a bunch of users on Evernote, a bunch on Notion, a bunch on Roam, a bunch on others. They all migrate to the current hot tool I don't think this is so very weird. For most users, popular products are likely to be more future proof, so choosing them can grant a sense of security.
  - skytreader 5y ago
    > For most users, popular products are likely to be more future proof Psh, the average user clearly hasn't heard of the Lindy effect[1]! /s Sarcastic condescension aside, I was really taken aback by the sheer fanfare Notion had when it released. In my circles, adoption was driven largely by one designer; in fairness he's always excited about new technology but when everything is the best thing since the iPad, a few eyebrows get raised. I'll bet lunch money they would be first to migrate to the next-hot PKM tool for the slightest feature offering. As for me, I want to spend the least amount of time adapting my workflow. My workflow must help me work, not be something I am constantly working on. So it's all about inertia for me; Evernote needs to fuck up big before I leave. In fairness, there was a time (around 2015s) when Evernote had frustrating bugs. Even beyond that, their editor was also subpar for such a long time. But I'm really satisfied with the current version which, I suspect, came about due to the threat Notion posed to their user numbers. Yay for market competition, I guess somehow I still benefited off Notion. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
crucialfelix 5y ago
Each page can also be a database table. The tables can have relationships to other tables. You can filter on columns. View as Kanban board. Teams can do issue tracking, lead tracking, product idea db, hiring. I always have a lot of little usability problems with it, but it can be very effective. It looks good out of the box. You can custom style to make it your own feel. This is why companies like it. It feels like a clubhouse. My Obsidian doesn't have any of that, but i use it more.
infensus 5y ago
Notion allows to create much more structured data than Evernote-like apps, which are usually just flat collections of pages. It's kinda a mixture of OneNote with WorkFlowy/Dynalist and some simple spreadsheet capabilities. In other words: nothing new, not perfect and not particularly fast, but conveniently packaged and flexible enough for most people to manage their workflow from a single app

submeta 5y ago

My guess is they spend a ton of money to promote their product. Many influencers on Youtube (adressing students) make several promoted videos a month (!) about how to use Notion. They have a ton of money to spend. Their latest valuation was ten billions, and they raised > 100m money. I also feel like they have a ton of (paid) ambassadors promoting the product aggressively on Reddit, Twitter and other platforms. It‘s a decent product, reminds me of Confluence, but with easy setup. Search is their biggest problem. You hit Command+P, open the universal search window, type something and wait literally seconds before something shows up.

polote 5y ago
I would be surprised they pay people when so many people are willing to talk about Notion for free. So yeah they started hiring Notion ambassadors (and paying them) recently, but much of the growth they had was without paying. I think they never paid for an ad, they only have a handful of people working in marketing, about 5 according to Linkedin. The reality is people who love Notion want to shout it everywhere and as a result you see content about Notion everywhere

OJFord 5y ago

I'm not going to claim it's revolutionary (and I don't know how much 'hype' there is because I don't follow stuff like ProductHunt) but it is more than that - it's a sort of recursive database table where every page is an entry, and you can view the page itself or various views (literally a table, or kanban for example, filtered, sorted) on the table. Or make a page containing a view on the table. Markdown editor is roughly what you get for free, but then there's the flexibility to build within it: kanban system with custom fields, CMS for a blog, etc. It's part of 'no-code' (although you can script formulaic fields derived from others) hype I suppose. Edit: I've just seen logseq.github.io via another comment, which looks great and probably clearer (to an HN user) why it's good and what you can do with it. Notion then is like a closed-source proprietary-format logseq, that's easier to use for, and targetting, a broader audience.

makapuf 5y ago
A modern Lotus Notes comes to mind...

polote 5y ago

> Is that really such a breakthrough? Don't evernote etc. do the same? Yeah it's the hype, today Notion is the go to tool for PKM, the same Evernote used to be a few years ago and the same others used to be before Evernote. For some weird reason people prefer to all use the same product, and instead of having a bunch of users on Evernote, a bunch on Notion, a bunch on Roam, a bunch on others. They all migrate to the current hot tool Whether it's Evernote or Notion, they are great products, but nothing revolutionary. The major difference between Evernote and Notion is that Notion has managed to get a good chunk of their revenue from companies. This should make them more durable.

RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
> For some weird reason people prefer to all use the same product, and instead of having a bunch of users on Evernote, a bunch on Notion, a bunch on Roam, a bunch on others. They all migrate to the current hot tool I don't think this is so very weird. For most users, popular products are likely to be more future proof, so choosing them can grant a sense of security.
- skytreader 5y ago
  > For most users, popular products are likely to be more future proof Psh, the average user clearly hasn't heard of the Lindy effect[1]! /s Sarcastic condescension aside, I was really taken aback by the sheer fanfare Notion had when it released. In my circles, adoption was driven largely by one designer; in fairness he's always excited about new technology but when everything is the best thing since the iPad, a few eyebrows get raised. I'll bet lunch money they would be first to migrate to the next-hot PKM tool for the slightest feature offering. As for me, I want to spend the least amount of time adapting my workflow. My workflow must help me work, not be something I am constantly working on. So it's all about inertia for me; Evernote needs to fuck up big before I leave. In fairness, there was a time (around 2015s) when Evernote had frustrating bugs. Even beyond that, their editor was also subpar for such a long time. But I'm really satisfied with the current version which, I suspect, came about due to the threat Notion posed to their user numbers. Yay for market competition, I guess somehow I still benefited off Notion. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

crucialfelix 5y ago

Each page can also be a database table. The tables can have relationships to other tables. You can filter on columns. View as Kanban board. Teams can do issue tracking, lead tracking, product idea db, hiring. I always have a lot of little usability problems with it, but it can be very effective. It looks good out of the box. You can custom style to make it your own feel. This is why companies like it. It feels like a clubhouse. My Obsidian doesn't have any of that, but i use it more.

infensus 5y ago

Notion allows to create much more structured data than Evernote-like apps, which are usually just flat collections of pages. It's kinda a mixture of OneNote with WorkFlowy/Dynalist and some simple spreadsheet capabilities. In other words: nothing new, not perfect and not particularly fast, but conveniently packaged and flexible enough for most people to manage their workflow from a single app