Bending Spoons
Bending Spoons was the best thing to ever happen to Evernote
The more I learn about how Evernote was operating before Bending Spoons bought it, the more I love how well it’s been taken care of now.
Although I began using Evernote in 2008, it was only in 2012, when I joined the Ambassadors Program, that I found myself gaining access to some inside information. But just like what happens today as an Evernote Expert, there was never full access to all the details, strategies, or plans for the future. For those, I’ve always done my homework, consuming every bit of public information and connecting the dots myself.
Things got slightly more complicated when they were acquired by a company I had never heard of before. That meant starting from scratch to learn all about Bending Spoons.
Like in the past, I found myself reading, watching, and listening to everything I could find related to that unknown company. And I mean anything. Even if it is about products unrelated to Evernote, like the recently acquired StreamYard.
As a non-developer, I don’t follow the Pragmatic Engineer Podcast because I wouldn’t be able to understand the majority of the conversations. But when I noticed a trio of executives from Bending Spoons in the same episode, I had to watch it and do whatever it took to understand what they were talking about.
Fortunately, the episode was not as challenging to follow as I was expecting. Everything that Luca Ferrari (cofounder and CEO) and Federico Simionato (Evernote product lead) said, I understood. But the many technical details explained by Francesco Mancone (CTO) meant pausing the podcast every few seconds to go learn about new terminology.
I had to watch it a few times because of his technical explanations. The first time was on a plane when I was going on vacation. Without the internet, there was no way to research anything online, but the one-hour-long episode gave me a good sense of how dense the material was. Back at my office, I could delve into it and “translate” all the technical jargon. The video below has my take on it, but that’s not the only thing I talked about.
I like to understand the reasons behind anything I’m learning, so it was incredibly helpful to listen to the cofounder go over the history of Bending Spoons. Not only that, but as I explained in the video above, the company operates in an unusual but fascinating way.
And there’s more. Being a fan of a lot of the Agile principles, I couldn’t help but notice some of them in Luca’s words. It would be wonderful to have him on my YouTube channel some day for a conversation about Bending Spoons.
Although I’m frequently in touch with Federico, there’s always something here and there that I’m learning from his appearances on podcasts. This time, it was the standalone app that will be released to showcase how great Evernote’s transcription feature is.
I have extensive knowledge about Evernote’s history, but it’s quite uncommon to get access to inside information. This is where listening to Francesco was instrumental in bridging certain gaps. When I contrasted the information he shared to all the moments I’m familiar with, I could realize the impressive amount of work the team is doing.
He was the one who helped me understand how much work is in progress to bring Evernote’s technical capabilities to the level of modern apps. And I’m not talking about new features; it’s about rebuilding almost everything under the hood. In other words, things that people don’t see, but that are instrumental to a seamless experience.
Now that I have a more in-depth understanding of how Bending Spoons operates and what is actually happening to my beloved app, I’m more confident than ever that Evernote is in great hands.
Bending Spoons has a vision for Evernote
As a longtime Evernote user and frequent collaborator with the team, I’ve always felt a deep connection to the app. But a recent Vergecast episode with David Pierce and Federico Simionato made me see things from a different perspective.
However, before that, “The Great Evernote Reboot” episode title evoked a wave of nostalgia. It made me remember all the years I went to the Evernote Conferences and when the company and its products were on the news all the time. Ironically, that nostalgia made me freeze for a moment and skip that episode. I wanted to listen to it with attention and give it the deserved respect and treatment. In honesty, it felt like a special moment.
The features discussed didn’t surprise me, though. For example, I just published a video about the sidebar customization. But Pierce’s approach was like turning things around just enough to give me a new perspective on Evernote’s direction after the Bending Spoons acquisition.
The goal is not to give users all the features they’ve been asking for quite some time. That’s great, but the main goal seams to be re-examining many things, from what Evernote is about for its users to the company’s revenue model. It is about focus and making the company sustainable for years to come. In a way, it feels like a reboot of the “100-year start-up” mantra, and I love it.
But listening to this episode also taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes, all it takes is a well-crafted question to gain a fresh perspective, even on something as familiar as Evernote.
Evernote Templates are broken and driving me crazy. But there's a solution!
I believe that the Bending Spoons deal was the best thing that ever happened to Evernote, but some new features may be adding even more confusion to old problems. For example, I would love Federico’s team to tackle the huge mess Templates is already making before it turns into an uncontrollable snowball.
Customizing Evernote is a must-have option because everyone uses it differently.
Every so often, I get the impression that Bending Spoons is following some of the same problematic routes that have already been attempted before them.
I love how fast the new mobile experience is, and I’m sure people who create notes mostly on their phones are happier than ever. But what I’m feeling is discomfort. It’s now 5 days since I started using the new Evernote home for mobile, and I’m yet to use the main screen as intended.
Stacey Harmon said it best: “I have to think about it a lot more than I used to”.
(…) I’m really struggling to embrace the new Home. It is not clicking for me. (…) I’m missing the customized create button. The options there don’t reflect my preferred capture ways. (source)
I also am just struggling to navigate the app and get to what I want. I’m not finding it intuitive… I have to think about it a lot more than I used to. (source)
If we go all the way back to 2014, when Evernote 7 adopted a modern interface to replace the previews skeuomorphic design mimicking a Rolodex, some complaints were about the lack of customization. Which the company ended up addressing.
When Evernote 8 for iOS came out, customization was gone again. And, as inevitable as gravity is, I remember people asking for many settings. One of the more prominent among my community was a way to turn off the recently used notebooks from the top of the notebooks list. Which, by the way, I didn’t felt the need to remove. In fact, I liked it. And that’s precisely my point.
Customizing Evernote is a must-have option because everyone uses it differently. So much so that Evernote 10 brought back many ways to personalize the app. Unfortunately, that’s now gone again.
But credit has to be given when it’s due. Bending Spoons was able to put together a user interface that has the best elements from many older iterations.
The creation buttons that were used on the first versions of the app are back. Then there’s the dock from Evernote 8, which makes it a breeze to switch from one view to another. And there is even a widget borrowed from the original version 10. To top it all off, this might be the fastest Evernote app ever released.
There’s just one missing piece: customization. And that’s something they could’ve learned from history. Evernote users need options simply because each one of us has a different vision of what makes the perfect Evernote experience.
And talking about history, in the second part of the video below, you can see a glimpse of how I try to keep Evernote’s history intact. Ironically, I do that using Obsidian.
Will 2024 be my first year without Evernote?
I think it’s fair to say that everyone was a bit astonished when the news broke on the third day of 2023. Bending Spoons, a company barely anyone knew about, had acquired Evernote.
For the past 15 years, I have never considered leaving Evernote. To be more precise, the thought never crossed my mind. Now it looks like 2024 will mean more to me than just a new year. Maybe it will be a year without Evernote. But it’s rare for something so big to happen suddenly. We have to go back to the beginning of 2022 to understand what’s going on.
I was already experimenting with Obsidian for my video production workflow when some of my clients asked me to help them build their workflows on Obsidian. That ended up starting a feedback loop of fresh ideas and more experimenting and teaching. Long story short, by the end of 2022, this learning and teaching system was at full speed. Then, boom! The acquisition news in January 2023. And, let’s not forget the chaos Twitter was in because of its own acquisition. What if Evernote experienced the same fate?
There you have it. It was a perfect storm forming before my very eyes.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s rare for only one event to cause a big change. It is usually the culmination of many small things happening simultaneously that creates the perfect conditions.
Most of my notes—about 80% of them—are still in Evernote. But if I’m quoting Pareto, the 20% of notes I’m using 80% of the time are already in Obsidian. And this makes all the difference. When I need to find something, chances are that Obsidian will have it. Which ended up helping me create the habit of opening Obsidian first. Oops!
Another important aspect of Obsidian is the fact that the mobile clients are fully functional. During short trips or vacations, I do not bring a computer with me, and I can still use Obsidian on my iPad as if I were at my office computer.
It’s not all roses, though
I was an early adopter of Postash.io back in 2014, and I loved the fact that I could convert any of my Evernote notes to pages of a website or blog posts. Sadly, the service never worked properly, and I ended up going back to a conventional website hosting service. Obsidian Publish seemed like the perfect opportunity to try that again, but although it is a very reliable service, it came with its own set of problems. As you already know, I went back to a traditional website hosting service. But this is a story for another day.
For the moment, I will leave you with this. It’s more likely than not that 2024 will be the year I switch from Evernote to Obsidian.
Happy New Year!
What went wrong with Evernote? How did we get here?
I expect negative comments on every video or article I publish about Evernote now. Sadly, talking about it makes me feel anxious.
I don’t think Evernote is doomed, but there is a profound shift in perception going on. It used to be that going to the Evernote Conference was the most important moment I looked forward to every year. It was great to see my friends, clients, developers, and the Evernote team.
Furthermore, sharing news from the conference or anything else Evernote released throughout the year had such positive vibes. Now, it’s hard to ignore all the negativity out there.
But the mood didn’t shift at once; it rarely does.
It all started many years ago
In July 2015, Phil Libin stepped down as CEO, and Chris O’Neill initiated a series of changes that made many of us, myself included, uneasy with the future of the company, or, in other words, our notes.
Evernote had a family of companion apps, and the new CEO gradually discontinued most of them, making many of us unhappy. But moving Evernote’s database to Google Cloud and the layoffs kicked off the first negative wave I’ve ever seen. At least, I do not recall anything similar during the Libin years.
I have to believe that from a financial standpoint, moving to Google servers was the best course of action. Even Apple used Google’s service in the early stages of iCloud. And I think they still do. However, the public’s perception was distorted by the way the media covered all the other CEO decisions.
For instance, I recall reading articles that referred to Evernote’s headquarters as a “ghost town.” I was furious about that; it made no sense. Back when Libin was CEO, or, in other words, before the layoffs, I visited the company and can attest that the building was not fully occupied. As far as memory serves, floors one and two were completely empty. Not even desks! The idea was to have enough room to grow in the future.
Nevertheless, I can relate to the anger and frustration people felt. The way the story was told made it hard to tell the difference between noise and reality, which leads me to the topic of communication. I’ve always found Evernote to be terrible at conveying decisions to its users. And the problem is still present. For instance, I believe that transferring operations to Europe was an excellent decision, but again, the public perception was different.
When you are hosting people’s memories, you don’t have the luxury of being as secretive as Apple or carless as a cable TV announcing the new version of its app. Every decision has to be over communicated.