
Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices - jasondc
https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/29/a-note-from-chris-oneill/
======
jason_slack
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.

~~~
twhb
I sound like a cynic when I say this, but the root cause of failures like this
is a principle fundamental to Evernote: data owned by an application, rather
than data accessed by an application.

If all your data exists in a file hierachy that you can browse, edit manually,
and back up, then you have the safety of relying only on foundational systems
for the survival of your data, and the power to use your data as you please
with tools of your choosing. But if the application owns your data—if it
stores it behind the scenes and never exposes it to you directly—then your
data is exactly as fragile as that application. If there’s a bug, your data
can disappear. If the company goes under, your application can rot to
unusability. If the product is discontinued, the same. If the company kills a
feature, you have to do without it. Or, most likely of all, the company could
start publishing buggier and buggier updates, and you’ll have no choice but to
use buggier and buggier software.

It seems like a clear choice to me: if the data is anything I value, I must
have direct access to it, regardless of what tools I use to manipulate it. The
only data I let websites or applications own is data I’d be OK with losing.

~~~
davidjgraph
I fully agree, but as a vendor that only implements bring-your-own-storage, I
can tell you it's not much fun from the supplier standpoint. Our no 1 support
request is something along the lines of:

"I've deleted my diagram, can you restore it for me?"

"No. We don't store your data, we never even see it"

"What a useless service, just get my data back or I want to speak to _random
escalation person_ "

99% of users don't care about privacy, architecture, etc. They want it to just
work (TM). They want us to be able to undo their deletion, find their data
when they forget where they moved it.

So it's users pressuring suppliers in the wrong direction, it's not all one
way traffic.

~~~
asuffield
(Disclaimer: I work at Google, not speaking for the company, etc)

We can do both. Google stores, backs up, secures, and generally ensures your
data is safe, and you can click a button to download it all if you think you
can do any of that better.

This is probably too hard to ask every company to do the same, as it would
exclude smaller companies who don't have the resources (this takes a lot of
time and development!). So it makes sense for them to offer a different
feature set, and accept that it's not going to be suitable for some people.

~~~
rwallace
> We can do both. Google stores, backs up, secures, and generally ensures your
> data is safe, and you can click a button to download it all if you think you
> can do any of that better.

This is exactly the right solution, and credit to Google for providing it.

> This is probably too hard to ask every company to do the same, as it would
> exclude smaller companies who don't have the resources (this takes a lot of
> time and development!).

I'm surprised you say that; it doesn't seem to me that 'dump this user's
dataset to JSON/XML/whatever' should be very hard to do. Admittedly I've never
worked on anything at Google scale. What am I missing?

~~~
asuffield
> What am I missing?

To pick a few things I can talk about - sufficient replication to not lose
data, data security that actually works (small companies can't - and shouldn't
- afford disk shredders and internal access audits), targeted obliteration of
customer data on request (including getting it out of the backups without
rendering the backups worthless), and making sure that your exported data dump
which contains massive amounts of personal information is only ever released
to the correct user.

Doing any one of these things in isolation is not all that hard, because you
can trade off against the others (for example, it is dead easy to do a data
dump if you don't care about data security). Doing all of them at the same
time is a large, expensive development project that would sink any startup.

------
tempestn
> 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).

~~~
austenallred
It would also be a huge plus if it didn't take 5 seconds to load every time I
opened the app. Not sure how a company with so many competitors can survive
long-term with its product in such a state.

~~~
everly
Agreed; Google Keep has become my preference for immediate note taking. I
think a major factor in Evernote's long-term survival is the friction of
switching to a competitor (in conjunction with getting a lot of early traction
with power-users).

~~~
greyman
What I find missing is a native Windows client. For me, "immediate" note
taking means that I just hit ctrl-alt-N (or click Evernote icon in a tray),
and I am immediately writing. In Google Keep, you basically need to visit a
webpage, which is just not immediate. Or you use it only on mobile device?

~~~
balac
You can install keep as a native looking desktop app by using the google app
launcher, then you can open it like any other app.

------
on_
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.

~~~
jcrawfordor
Microsoft 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.

~~~
ecobiker
OneNote is now completely free and available on iOS as well (where it has a
full 5-star rating). As much I love Evernote, it's going to be an uphill
battle for them. (And not to mention the handwriting experience and
integration with the Surface Pen - which are killer features for students)

~~~
ultimape
Nice thing is that the desktop app can sync/save copies locally and does
private backups, but you can also save/sync and store data in OneDrive,
private server, or corporate internet via a samaba share (Free version only
syncs to OneDrive, but IIRC does local backup in desktop app).

Architecturally it's a very impressive product and makes some pretty creative
uses of the windows folder hierarchy to get it's job done.

I think OneNote was built with a crashfirst mentality - It is very hard to
lose data w/ it. Their QA team is damn impressive too, I've been a follower of
theirs for a while.

My only complaint is the lack of true real-time sharing ala google docs's
Operational Transform (they didn't exist when it was made), but it does come
close. Opening a shared notebook in class and having everyone collaborate on
the note was an awesome experience.

It's inking support blows everything out of the water IMHO. It also has a lot
of the advanced automation features you can access by integrating OneTastic.

Only real issue I've ran into is that it gets to be a pain to print with as it
has some wonky scaling features and the page layout feels like an after
thought.

It is also hard to get groups of people to use it effectively because it is
basically a WIKI and needs to have the same kind of discipline / habits to
make it usable.

If they can do inking support with Operational Transforms, they may be able to
have a replay feature without even trying - something that many teachers seem
to really want out of the product.

My friend and I love the product so much we've been trying to make our own
online version with inking support w/ paper.js share.js, github, and
localstorage.

~~~
billrobertson42
What is inking support?

~~~
Spivak
It has really good pen/stylus support. It has completely replaced handwritten
notes for me.

However, although it's amazing compared to a pen and paper it's still
incredibly frustrating to work with.

* It can't handle large amounts of handwriting without igniting relatively powerful computers

* It crashes _constantly_ when trying to balance pen input with palm rejection

* Syncing doesn't really work with non-trivial merging and doesn't handle sync errors nor errors in general well -- all of these usually end up with handwriting layered on top of itself

* Syncing is basically out of your control, you can't do partial syncs when you really need a section/page fast, and large notebooks with handwriting can take hours to sync completely. I've basically resigned to splitting my notes into many smaller notebooks.

* Handwriting on the "Desktop" version is a complete joke and so you're constantly switching between the that and the app to get good handwriting and more features.

So it's great, until it doesn't work then it's a nightmare.

~~~
elevenfist
OneNote works fairly well on Windows. The main issue I have with it is
usability. Performance on Macs and iOS is fairly terrible though, from syncing
lag, to input lag, (on an iPhone 6) to long load times.

------
neya
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/thecontentmark...](https://www.evernote.com/pub/contentblueprint/thecontentmarketingblueprint)

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
> I refuse to stop paying

I'm not sure you meant that

~~~
neya
Hah! You got me :) I meant the opposite, thanks for pointing out!

------
egusa
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-
un...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-
unicorn-2015-9)

~~~
cyberpanther
My prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox

They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and
their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and
services.

~~~
tajano
Another prediction: Twitter.

2k+ engineers on staff without notable improvements to the core user-facing
product in a while.

Declining signups, declining engagement.

Nobody stepping into the permanent CEO role.

I don't see how this ends well.

~~~
Ezhik
It's so hard for me to imagine a service like Twitter crashing.

~~~
tajano
I don't expect it to disappear (not completely, not over night).

But they're burning through $130M+ a quarter and growth is stalling. They
don't seem to have leadership with a vision of where to take the company from
here.

Twitter still enjoys some cache with celebrities, but how much longer will
that hold true?

So how will they stop bleeding? Maybe they'll transform Twitter into something
profitable, or maybe they'll look to the 2,000+ engineers, and ask why they
need so many.

------
djhn
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.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
While I think OneNote is a superior product to Evernote, its organization
abilities leaves much to be desired. For instance once you get more than like
10-15 (depending on resolution) pages within a second you now have to scroll
and its a tiny list. More than, say, 2 sections on mobile means horizontal
scrolling. It's all awkward and cumbersome.

But I have yet to find another product that is better than Evernote and
OneNote or even just a single, other product better than Evernote. if you find
one let me know. I love my OneNote but the organization drives me nuts (I love
the tagging abilities in Evernote).

~~~
porker
Ah whereas I find organisation in Evernote not to work. The tagging feature
(on Windows at least) is buggy, and I often end up with half-word tags; they
can also be 'lost' before the note syncs. I have notebooks full of
disorganised information which I can't find -- this is what I view as
Evernote's biggest weakness.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Fair enough; when I used Evernote I subscribed to the "tag everything" way of
organizing stuff which worked fairly okay but yeah the interface even on Mac
OS X is very buggy. I couldn't consistently create nested tags and tag nesting
is a UI only feature; there is no actual hierarchy that can be searched for
which is immensely disappointing.

------
chris-at
I was a big fan & paying customer of Evernote until they lost my data and then
blamed me for syncing from two devices.

~~~
swagswag
same thing.

even had the audacity to keep charging me

------
virtuabhi
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
It looks exacly like the kind of tool I have been looking for for years,
albeit for linux/windows

~~~
noir_lord
[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.

------
nemomatic
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-
qualit...](https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/01/04/on-software-quality/)

------
fwn
I wish they would ditch the business focus and return to plain old "remember
everything".

Who on earth needs features like "work chat"?

~~~
dasboth
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
> 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-
un...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-
unicorn-2015-9)

------
symstym
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/)

~~~
jay_kyburz
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

~~~
thanatropism
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.)

~~~
saturdaysaint
I love Dropbox, but is it a platform for an investment-worthy business?
Anecdotally, I know a lot of people that have a free account that's completely
full and have no intention of paying $99 a year and would probably need to
have their password re-emailed to them. I agree that there are potential (and
actual) great apps, but this kind of onboarding experience restricts the
audience greatly.

------
Ensorceled
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.

------
cag_ii
> 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
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.

------
JustSomeNobody
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"?

~~~
jmadsen
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.

~~~
kasey_junk
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.

~~~
uptown
The term for that is furlough.

------
Justin_K
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-
functionali...](https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67060-list-
functionality-such-as-bullets-and-numbers-are-a-categorical-nightmare/)

~~~
ericax
For indexed bullet list you should try Dynalist, demo here:
[https://dynalist.io/demo](https://dynalist.io/demo)

------
Animats
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.

------
rdancer
"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
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.

------
rcarmo
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-
ru...](http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2015/08/16/1800#onenote-to-rule-them-
all)

------
pbreit
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.

------
kristofferR
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/)

------
methehack
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.

------
vskarine
"Evernote, The First Dead Unicorn"
[https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55e1beac15970d6c01395d9d](https://syrah.co/joshdickson40/55e1beac15970d6c01395d9d)

~~~
joshdickson
great article! ;)

~~~
Flenser
(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
lol seriously. What crosses your head when you just remove the scrollbar?

------
motti
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
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.

~~~
laurent123456
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
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.

------
barkingcat
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.

------
qyv
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?

------
lemiffe
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!

------
reuven
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
I have the same feeling with you at the moment(s) every time I open Evernote
it prompts to ask you to upgrade.

------
meepadock
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.

~~~
allengeorge
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.

------
boxy310
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.

------
radiorental
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
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
You can still keep focus tight and do the unicorn thing. Snapchat comes to
mind, there are plenty other examples.

------
metral
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.

------
nowprovision
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

------
dendory
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.

------
vas1
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.

------
nealrs
You know what _really_ sucks about this? They're closing off the API & got rid
of their evangelists.

~~~
tempestn
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
Open, developer-friendly APIs also have the ability to fragment core app
usage. That could be a big motivator.

------
inthewoods
A bit surprised no one has mentioned SimpleNote (www.simplenote.com) - a
stripped down note taking service.

~~~
apostrophedave
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
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.

------
noyesno
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/)

------
risratorn
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 :(

------
TurboHaskal
I used to be a customer for a while. Then went with org-mode + git and never
looked back.

~~~
jansc
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?

~~~
Semiapies
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.

------
Spooky23
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
> 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.

------
mhartl
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.

------
hamxiaoz
\- 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

------
ivanb
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-t...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3012870/dialed/evernotes-quest-to-
become-a-100-year-old-startup) Have they changed their mind yet?

------
rickomegan
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
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.

------
outworlder
> 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.

------
porker
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.

------
bvrlt
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...](https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/16/better-brainstorms-
with-scannables-newest-update/)) a couple weeks ago.

------
AdmiralAsshat
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
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.

------
jackgavigan
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).

------
greyman
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.

------
dragon88
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
great question. Also similar I have been seeking an equivalent online docs
product with built-in flows from draft to review to approved

------
tlogan
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 :(

------
dctoedt
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.

------
geff82
...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.

------
enibundo
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.

------
dmritard96
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
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.

------
tuscarok
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.

------
crymer11
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.

------
shostack
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.).

------
PretzelFisch
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.

------
Pxtl
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.

------
rajadigopula
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.

------
Kiro
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.

------
drmarkrbaker
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.

------
andy_ppp
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?

------
dpc_pw
For people looking for replacement ideas: I use Zim + Syncthing. Works on my
Linux machines, and Android app works OK.

------
codecamper
I used Evernote for a few weeks & it lost a bunch of my work. I can't believe
they are still around.

------
jayonsoftware
I used to be a evernote user for a long time then last year moved to OneNote,
OneNote has come a long way.

------
sown
I wonder if this is a prelude to some acquisition or merger to make the
company more sellable.

------
myth_buster
The first two charts in the "Growth" section has significantly different
scaling!

------
apricot13
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.

------
onedev
Do they really have a "Go Premium" CTA at the end of this blog? Wow.

------
ulfw
And so it begins...

------
dghughes
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?

------
ogezi
And the death of the unicorns begins

------
encoderer
Why did they have so many offices?

~~~
johannes1234321
"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&I...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/evernote-
layoffs-2015-9?r=US&IR=T)

Mind that "an office" can be only one or two persons doing some local
marketing work or do some specific feature implementation.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-
layoffs-2015-9](http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-layoffs-2015-9), which
points to this.

~~~
caf
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
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.

------
curiousjorge
what's evernote again? I keep hearing about it but never seen it or have used
it.

~~~
Nursie
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
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
Twitter? The media darling twitter, that is used by every celebrity, artist
and PR person? Of course not.

