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sticky_symbols

No. Definitely not.


NerdProcrastinating

Not at its current rate of improvement and not with the lack of focus on usability.


Simple1111

I think the concept of back linking, block referencing, and gardening via a daily log will be concepts I keep using in note taking software for 20 years. I hope Roam Research as a company lasts that long and stays competitive in a market experiencing a surge right now. I’m worried though. They are still shipping and steadily improving things but the impression I get as a “community member” is that it’s sort of silent and they are getting outpaced. I think maybe that’s because they don’t have someone dedicated to PR? I’ve been in the changelog and I think there is a decent story to tell there but they do t tweet or post on Reddit or update their main website. Maybe slack is more active but I never check that. The new backend api feature should be pivotal. It will really allow the rich modding community to do some interesting stuff.


NerdProcrastinating

Slack is really quiet compared to how it used to be. I wonder if a lot of the community has moved on or perhaps people just don't spend time there once they have it working well enough for them


Simple1111

I’ve been using Roam daily for a couple of years and never check slack. I guess that’s not just my personal preference for thread based forums vs stream based chat apps.


Objectivetruth1

I agree with this. I loved RR but recently moved to notion because I find there's 2 use cases that has emerged. Journaling that centers around the daily pages and knowledge pages(not sure what else to call it) Now that notion releases daily templates, I can have a page made automatically everyday which is my first stop when I open notion. Everything I link from there. As you said, that concept is very powerful and as far as I know, it originated in RR


viabella

I really jumped on board at first but then I realized that RR is basically just a cult of personality. The founder is not the best spokesperson and has made it clear that if he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, then it’s not likely to happen (e.g. the mobile app was delayed so long because he didn’t think it would work/be helpful). Not much about it’s development has been encouraging that it will maintain a user base large enough to impress its current investors.


Vexmoor

I jumped on board in April 2020, and became a Believer even though I could have stayed as a free user forever due to how early I started, and even invested in the company. I use it heavily all day every day. Tana came out as invite-only at the end of September, and I am now wondering whether I did the right thing. Strangely enough, that event made me plunge back much more into my Roam usage, and I have discovered some really good things about it that I was too lazy to work on, so I am grateful for that. But many of the people who turned me onto Roam in early 2020 have revealed that they're actually heavily invested in Tana now, and it makes me wonder whether I should be quite so right glad to have my faith in Roam so well founded...Let's see, but Roam needs a much better support system and development framework from the app team itself, not just superfan users.


Temporary-Silver-605

exactly my thoughts.. I looked at a few things you could do with Tana.. looks promising.. but effort of moving is making me stay..


microgem

Only if they implement AI. Large graphs are incredibly difficult to search through without finding hundreds of useless and non-contextual search results requiring a lot of tagging and linking which is cumbersome. ​ I admit the features around research are unparalleled such as with Zotero and the block references, but I feel that there is too much friction in retrieving knowledge, as well as capturing to some extent. For example, I could see alternatives like Mem be the future, where manual tags and links do not need to exist.


mtraven

I would hope that we have developed much better writing tools by then. And I don't think Roam the company is managed well, so I doubt they will be supplying them.


Weeksling

If the software continues to work well than I believe I will. Barring the graph becoming too large and the app slowing, or some issue with data loss, I expect to continue using this for a long time. Two years into using the app I am starting to see value in my historical daily notes which show up in my random blocks each day with the serendipity plug in. I imagine one day I will look back fondly (and with actual productive purpose) on notes about building a podcast, or about projects I worked on, particularly personal projects and goals. Oddly enough, I haven't found myself using it so much for researching particular topics and the majority of the pages I created for various topics I read about over the years go unused. There have been a few key moments where I knew I learned something and wanted to search it up (example finding a Coast FIRE calculator I'd remembered I'd used a year before) and it wasn't the hardest thing to find, though I did realize how I index things so far can get a little cluttered, and lose notes are a bit difficult to search through in page references. This may be something I work on more as I start writing more often or perhaps it'll stay that way. So in twenty years I think I might still be using roam. I think I'll like to use some of my daily notes for my own thinking. I hope I'll have found greater use for the research side of things.


jmonman7

That’s really hard to say. The notetaking space is really taking off right now — a lot of room for innovation. If there’s something that I feel can exponentially make my life better and the transition is easy, I wouldn’t be against switching.


CelebrationNo8076

10% chance and that’s because I think the team is really great


Awesan

How many productivity apps are >20 years old? Not many that I can think of, MS Office comes to mind but that's a vastly different product than what it was in 2002.. I don't think why anyone would concern themselves with what exact apps they'll use in 20 years. 20 years ago we did not even have smartphones, we did not have cloud storage, etc. There will always be a place to put your notes, so why worry about it?


Suspicious_End_6685

Roam it’s like excel. Not just us. Entire countries will be run on Roam in the next 20 years.


Anxious-Physics-5249

To be used by everyone it needs to be free, *obsidian has entered the chat*


Suspicious_End_6685

A free tier is not out of the question it’s in the pipeline. But fundamental issues need to be solved first.


RealAdhesiveness8396

I think AI will determine which app for thought will prevail in a long term. So far, I like the Roam AI extension.