Evernote is Missing the Boat on webOS

August 26, 2010 by Pamela 11 Comments

Part of my THE WAY I SEE IT series, where I quick-hit a few topics per week.

Remember Everything. That’s Evernote’s motto… but, is it really? This company seems to have forgotten what it takes to “grow”.

Evernote is a cloud service that allows users to keep track of many things – such as notes, ideas and outlines. It syncs with computers and smartphones via software.

The Evernote service launched in 2008 and took more than a year to reach a million users. They were once “nobodies”. This month they reached a 4 million user-base. (see report)

Evernote Corporation claims its service works with every device – for smartphones that’s primarily done via installed apps. However, earlier this week webOSroundup reported Evernote’s plans to cease development for webOS.

“We’d love to see the WebOS platform succeed at HP, but our resources are limited, so the WebOS client is currently on the “back burner” while we wait to see what happens with the platform.” – Dave Engberg, Evernote

In short, Evernote isn’t interested in catering to a smaller user base, and that includes fixing bugs in an actively-served app from Palm’s catalog.

It’s not that webOS users themselves are being totally ignored. Yesterday webOSroundup ran another article, whereas an Evernote employee said he was passing the complaint to the CEO, who would converse with management. Which… makes me wonder…

How big or small is this company? From the emails, there are at least two regular employees (or reps), a CEO and management team. Perhaps not a goliath, but certainly larger than the majority of app developers. By ignoring user-bases Evernote is telling us the company is either short-staffed or doesn’t want to spend the money on an outside developer.

The way I see it, if Evernote bails out of webOS just to sit, and wait, and see… well, then the webOS community doesn’t need the service. It’s that simple. Hey, there are plenty of competing services and it’s no secret that more stellar cloud services are being developed. If Evernote wants let its competition grab a bigger piece of the pie, that’s Evernote’s business. If the company’s not willing to take the risk on a great platform – that definitely has potential – why should users take the risk on its cloud services?

While this may make sense to companies vying only for the largest group of potential users, Evernote shouldn’t ignore smaller groups, comprised of truly dedicated users who tend to be more vocal with their support of a product. To ignore those users is to forget from whence Evernote came.

Tim Stiffler-Dean

Great comments, Pamela. I especially like your deduction about how large the company is and what that means as far as their development process. I find it interesting that they are waiting to see what Palm/HP does with the platform even after HP has made it so well known that BIG things are in store.

Any other company that was in the position that Evernote is currently in (they already have an App in our small catalog) would do everything they could to make sure they maintain that top spot and be known by every possible webOS user. Apparently Evernote leadership isn’t thinking too well.
Matjaz

Well, for now, they didn’t support Symbian either.
Lonnie

Could you list the Evernote competitors for the webOS platform?
- Pamela
  
  Lonnie:
  
  See John’s detailed response above. He does mention Simplenote as an alternative.
John

Very insightful analysis, Pamela and also Tim. I really don’t understand Evernote’s position here because they already have the app published. Surely they could provide maintenance updates with minimal effort and actually GAIN goodwill with customers instead of losing it. As an Evernote premium subscriber, I emailed them asking about their position and the response was that “back burner” was an unfortunate wording but that the webOS app was “not currently being developed”, a state that all of their apps go into at various times in their lifecycle.

As for competition, I’m liking Simplenoteapp.com quite a bit. They are not as feature-rich as Evernote (by a long shot) but I don’t really need all of Evernote’s features either. For basic text notes, Simplenote is great and supports an API for third-party developers so there are lots of Mac and Windows options, Firefox and Chrome plugins, and even Emacs and Perl options. For webOS, I’m using Noted! by Tiger Country Software. The combo is one thing Evernote for webOS never was: FAST. Noted! starts up in a flash. It stores notes locally and gives you numerous options on how/when to sync. In the end, it’s fast to get at your local notes, whether you navigate straight to it or type to search.

What I really see when looking at the options for Simplenote is exactly the opposite of what I see happening at Evernote: a company determined to support as many customers as possible, no matter how they seek to access the service. That’s what I thought I was getting with Evernote, but the lack of a Linux client (a minor annoyance for me really) followed now by this mess, has shown me that I don’t need them. I certainly don’t need to maintain my premium subscription. I never needed it in the first place for the bandwidth I use. I just like to support technologies I believe in.

I took a couple weeks to think it over but I’m going to cancel my subscription right now.
- Pamela
  
  John:
  
  Thanks for the detailed feedback.
  
  One user had mentioned that a third-party developer could use Evernote’s API and create a better app. While that may be good, I’m a firm believer that if a company doesn’t care about you to fix their own app issues, why support them?
  
  Thanks for the tip on Simplenote. I’ll comment to Lonnie about that.
Kurt Winrich

Pamela – I had just recently DL’d the Evernote app for my Pre+ (i.e., mid-December) and was looking forward to using it. Sadly my Apr 2010 Pre+ which had developed the well-know USB port screen crack, began to exhibit the “ghost in the machine” problem that I’ve read is a precursor to a dead touch screen. Whatever, I decided to abandon that Pre+ and activate a second, unused Pre+ I had stored in a drawer (long story). All is well except that the Evernote app seems to vanished! And I can’t find any discussion about it. A Google search brought me to your post here and I thought maybe you’d know what happened. Is it just me, or is the app really gone from the App Catalog? Thanks.
MarkP

Hello Pamela,nI agree with your analysis completely.u00a0 Evernote is definitely missing the boat.u00a0 I’ve been using it since beta (v 0.3-ish) and I remember when they were just a handful of guys.u00a0 We use it exstensively in our office (and one user is stubbornly still on the pre-web version 2.2), but we are limited when it comes to webOS.u00a0 Evernote for my Pre+ works okay, but not great.u00a0 nnOn the TouchPad, the browser version works, but it is mostly useful for viewing existing notebooks and notes.u00a0 Editing is there, but severely lacking. This is one of our killer apps and we want to see a full blown version.nnAnother option for webOS, which I haven’t tried, is TapNote.
Ophe21143

I really guess all you experts here were painfully wrong and the Evernote staff were dead on. No more Webos devices huh I guess some of you here will learn to do some research before you run your gappers.
- Pamela Hazelton
  
  It’s funny that you’d come back *11 months* after this post was written to say, “I told you so…” Least you could do is call me an idiot on a post I wrote THIS month. Seriously…nnOr perhaps a post that wasn’t pointing out an app dev who left a buggy app out there – one they made money off then opted not to fix…
Darkvader Inbox

I’m a Senior Software Engineer and the reality is that if people don’t let themselves to be manipulated by marketing and make honest decisions on what they use, I will guaranteed that they will move to WebOS.nnWebOS is by far the best OS on phones and tablets at the moment, the real multitasking experience with cards is 100 times that anything out there at the moment, the problem is that the app catalog is too small yet, like the App store was for iOS and Android at the beginning. But withthe amount tablets sold after the fire sales i think more developers will build apps for WebOS base on customer pressure and demand. So far I have not yet found one person that have told me that they don’t like WebOS after they use it for the first time, the exclamation usually is why I have never heard of it or why is not been use in more devices.nnHP is not killing WebOS is just getting out of the Hardware business and most likely will license out the OS to either HTC or Samsung so I think a lot of people will bite the tongue very soon.