Is Roam Research the Next Big Tool!?
With Notion’s $2bn value, will Roam join this success?
There’s naturally been a lot of hype around Notion these last few weeks, and with Notion’s strong $2bn pre-money valuation, surely there’s room for more workspace tools to run alongside its success.
So, what is Roam, how does it compare, how’s it being used? And most importantly, will it follow in Notion’s footsteps as the tool for the masses.
What is Roam
Roam Research is a note-taking application with a twist.
Unlike Evernote, Roam allows you to connect up notes using something called “networked thought” — which essentially produces relationships between notes you’ve created.
For some, when using it, it’ll remind you of an outliner application like Dynalist or Workflowy, but has a smarter nature — producing references and relationships, allowing for a range of use cases.
Use Cases
So who’s using this application?
It seems to be a range of users. Mainly those who are looking for a blend between a life wiki, note-taker, and task management tool.
Twitter is full of users sharing how they’re using it.
The majority of the use cases look like they are similar to what people use Evernote, Notion, and tools like Dynalist more.
Compare
Take Notion, for example, Roam differs in a variety of ways.
- Roam doesn’t offer databases
- Notion doesn’t offer tags to connect notes
- Evernote is more of a filing cabinet solution
- Roam links things together like your brain does
To summarise, Roam is more of a hybrid note-taking/outliner tool that has strong and powerful tagging abilities that extend to how we think about and should use notes, a real revolution in the way we note-take.
Opinions
Right now, it's important to note, it’s only available on the browser with mobile editions in the works.
But that doesn’t stop the world of Roam users. A cult has been formed, with the hashtag #RoamCult — that shares their wisdom and learnings on Roam across the web.
Overall, Roam is exciting. As mentioned its a jump forward for many traditional note-takers so the future could be very exciting. Taking a concept like Evernote and putting it into context better for our human brains to utilize.
Whilst I see Roam growing in 2020, I’m not sure they will gain mainstream attraction that Notion has seen until 2022, as it becomes more simple to swallow and understand, Roam will become more appreciated.
I think the value in Roam will be to keep small, keep innovating and growing their community — but without a doubt, it’s impressed me to date, whilst I haven’t jumped on board as a user myself, due to heavy Notion use, I do see so many fabulous ways the community is using it.
