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Notion's mid-life crisis

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Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#2

Post by danpalmer »

This is a fun piece of creative writing, but I’m not quite sure of the point it’s trying to make about Notion. Is it that Notion is no longer cool? That might be true but isn’t the most insightful comment. Is it about Notion the company languishing in some way?

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#3

Post by bigyikes »

Funny, but how wrong are they? I haven’t had the misfortune of using Salesforce, but isn’t it a glorified relational DB in the same way that Jira is?

I know a few people at Notion, and one thing I can say is that they have taste, in the way Apple has taste. I think this shows in their product.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#4

Post by sanex »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

This is a fun piece of creative writing, but I’m not quite sure of the point it’s trying to make about Notion. Is it that Notion is no longer cool? That might be true but isn’t the most insightful comment. Is it about Notion the company languishing in some way?

It's middle aged and not exciting anymore? Doesn't know what else to do so it buys a sports car (adds AI). Just guessing but I know I am much less excited about notion than I was 4 years ago and maybe that's the point or maybe that's just how it resonated with me.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#5

Post by lovethevoid »

bigyikes wrote: post #3

Funny, but how wrong are they? I haven’t had the misfortune of using Salesforce, but isn’t it a glorified relational DB in the same way that Jira is? I know a few people at Notion, and one thing I can say is that they have taste , in the way Apple has taste. I think this shows in their product.

We’re all glorified relational DB when you think about it lol

Notion was one of THE new tastemakers. Every startup copying their designs, now there’s AI generators to make “notion style art”. To see their new pages and additions have such clunky copyrighting is disappointing and I hope just temporary, not a sign the tastemakers have left the company.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#6

Post by Multicomp »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

This is a fun piece of creative writing, but I’m not quite sure of the point it’s trying to make about Notion. Is it that Notion is no longer cool? That might be true but isn’t the most insightful comment. Is it about Notion the company languishing in some way?

Notion is jumping the shark by moving from being a notes organization / mini database product to trying to compete with Salesforce and Hubspot. Just completely a different sector / product.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#7

Post by wokwokwok »

https://www.notion.so/templates/category/crm

> Streamline your customer relationships with Notion's CRM Templates

It's a joke, but it's also not a joke.

I mean, come on. Is notion really pitching itself as a CRM?

It's not a CRM. Anyone who uses it as a CRM is an idiot, bluntly.

...

https://www.notion.so/use-case/crm

Oh, wait. I guess it's a supported use case. I uh... take it back... I guess...

> If you don’t want to use a dedicated CRM platform or start from a template, you can use a no-code platform like Notion to build a knowledge base or team homepage and modify it to fit your CRM needs.

Yeah, I guess some people will think that's a good idea.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#8

Post by makeitdouble »

bigyikes wrote: post #3

Funny, but how wrong are they? I haven’t had the misfortune of using Salesforce, but isn’t it a glorified relational DB in the same way that Jira is? I know a few people at Notion, and one thing I can say is that they have taste , in the way Apple has taste. I think this shows in their product.

Notion defnitely had something to it when it only had to be a documentation platform. It was fast, clean and elegant, and that helped to forgive the missing bits (table support or plantUML kind of plugins)

But now that they've added a ton of features requested left and right, and effectively presented Notion as a one-stop solution to every documentation problem, I don't see much taste and elegance persisting. Not that the people you know lost their taste, more that it doesn't matter if they have to say yes to absolutely everything to keep being a one-stop solution that does it all.

In my or people started changing the way they write to stop triggering Notion features, and on the other side figjam and spreadsheet documents are coming back even as it could have been a Notion page.

There's definitely a shift IMHO. Notion will keep being used, but it might not be the first choice when other simpler options are available.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#9

Post by staplers »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

This is a fun piece of creative writing, but I’m not quite sure of the point it’s trying to make about Notion. Is it that Notion is no longer cool? That might be true but isn’t the most insightful comment. Is it about Notion the company languishing in some way?

I used to use Notion daily. I switched to Anytype when Notion launched an AI tool that trains on your data.

A bit more of a learning curve but that's an absolute no-go when a tool contains the inner workings of my brain. Plenty of comparable private options.

Intellectual capital is rapidly being migrated from workers to shareholders under the guise of "AI".

Imagine a world where C-suites no longer rely on or support creative minds.

EDIT: They may say they don't train on user data currently but there's nothing stopping them in the future, especially if they are moving upmarket.

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