I was really shocked when Google Reader disappeared. I wondered what would happen to my information gathering from now on.
However, Google is really right… After the end of Google Reader, I shifted to feedly and still use it, but it is true that only going to collect information by myself with RSS reader is a prehistoric thing, as they say. I’ve been thinking strongly about it recently.
However, that being said, I personally feel that the « curation and curators » that started to attract attention a few years ago have their limits…
But the Evernote Context feature, I think this is going to be the new way to gather information in 2015 and beyond. I’m starting to think so. That’s because I’ve noticed a feature…
What is Evernote Context?
Evernote Context is a new feature for premium members that has been available since last October.
This is the kind of thing that appears at the bottom of the note.
Evernote official page:
Frequently Asked Questions: About Context Features
I remember hearing about this news around the end of last year, and I’ve noticed that something appears at the bottom of the screen when I’m using it, but I only thought it was somewhat useful for picking up past notes and related internet articles.
But there was more wonderful goodness out there!
I can see the entire WSJ article through an Evernote context!
Recently, I’ve been trying to read English news as much as possible to study English. Because of my job, I want to follow financial and economic news, so I look at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Reuters, Bloomberg, etc. But as you know, most of the articles in the WSJ’s web edition are only available to paying members to see all the text.
However, I discovered the other day that even if you are not a paid member of the WSJ, you can see the entire content of the article through the Evernote context.
Here’s a quick explanation of what I mean.
For example, you can access the URL of a WSJ article that you are interested in on a website. But you can’t see all of the content unless you are a paid member.
But for now, I’ll just clip it to a note in Evernote. If you use iOS, you can clip from feedly, chrome or safari.
You will then see these clipped notes within Evernote. If you go to the bottom, you’ll see a list of related articles and notes, as shown below.
However, if the clipped article is from WSJ, the exact same article appears in context.
When you click on it, you can see all the WSJ articles in the Evernote app that you couldn’t see in your browser earlier!
And you can save this article itself to your notebook. Easily, with the touch of a button.
Of course, this feature is also available for the iPhone.
On weekday mornings, I basically use my iPhone when I’m on the move, so it’s very easy to do this sequence of things using my iPhone: « Clip the web I’m interested in using the iOS function -> check it later in Evernote ».
You don’t have to be a paying member of the WSJ or Nikkei to see the full article!
Perhaps Evernote is paying the media side of the equation.
It’s hard to notice this merit, and especially for now, there doesn’t seem to be much merit except for English articles, and I feel that only IT and gadget lovers would become premium members of Evernote and make full use of it in the first place, so it’s probably too niche. However, I think this is a new form of media revenue model.
Moreover, it’s just my personal feeling, but this Evernote’s context matching function is pretty good, so I think the value of Evernote’s premium membership will increase even more if it’s connected with other paid media. I’d like to see that happen.
However, it seems (somewhat ironically) that people like the Nikkei-loving salarymen won’t understand what this is all about (excuse me). Considering this, I’m a little concerned about whether or not the collaboration with Nikkei will ever happen. (The Japanese media inevitably has an image of being averse to this kind of thinking…)
So, this is the real attraction of Evernote context. A few months after its release, I finally realized it. I think the value of being a premium member has been increased again.
Is this kind of collaboration with the media the way of the future?
Incidentally, I seem to remember that you could do the same thing secretly on Facebook: you could only see the full text of WSJ feed articles if you were a paying member if you viewed them directly on the website, but you could see the full text within Facebook.
However, the crucial difference between FB and Evernote is that in FB, all the articles are selected by the sender, i.e. WSJ, so they are not necessarily the topics that you are interested in. On the other hand, with Evernote, you can pick up the topics you are interested in by yourself. Naturally, it is not possible to judge which is better than the other, but it can be said that each has its own merits according to its use.
In any case, I think Facebook and Evernote are doing better than Google and Amazon in this respect, and this kind of collaboration between SNS and cloud-based companies and existing media may become mainstream in the future. If this is the kind of monetization, as a consumer, I’d be happy to contribute to the company’s profits by offering a fee.
Addendum 2015-03-16:Nikkei Newspaper has been added.
From today, 2015-03-16, Nikkei Newspaper has been added to this function.
