Roam is Evernote back… in 2009

Potentially a better Evernote replacement than Notion

Roam Research has been on everyone’s minds in the last few weeks, and if you haven’t heard about it yet – where have you been?!

Yesterday, the platform even went down due to the traffic surge from Thomas Frank, a productivity YouTuber, and his guide to using the snazzy new note-taking tool and how it works in practice.

Roam’s rise to attention actually came as a surprise to me. Hidden beneath Notion’s hype, Roam found a niche with a set of users – not needing the overly powerful databases in Notion but a balance between Notion and Evernote, for personal note-taking.

The magic with Roam is all in the linked references. Inside Roam, you can build relationships between each of your notes. Connecting them makes recall, searching, and discovery so much more insightful – and something Evernote could have developed years ago.

👨🏻‍💻 Evernote Level Hype

Taking about Evernote, Roam reminds me a lot of Evernote in the first few years. With Evernote, there was plenty of hype around the application for a range of reasons – the first was the nature of the tool’s accessibility and feature sets.

For many at the time, there wasn’t an effective note-taking solution, so the features Evernote presented in their smooth web app, document capture, and the rise of GTD presented a solution.

Roam has captured the same attention and whilst early days is giving off the same vibes Evernote was in its foundation years.

🎩 Roam Cult

The second element that brings back Evernote revolution memories is the CEO and the community behind the Roam rise.