Obsidian & Roam Are Hobbyist Apps

Both of these productivity apps might not become household names

Roam Research and Obsidian in 2020 and 2021 have become really popular tools, as the new way to take notes.

I believe that, whilst fantastic as they are for note-taking, both of these tools will not become household names.

When I speak household names, I refer to the popularity that tools like OneNote, Evernote and Notion have received over the years.

📝 The Hobbyist Tools

Roam and Obsidian both include what’s called “bi-directional linking” a concept coined by the note-taking community which simply means to connect one note to another, and build a relationship.

For many everyday note-takers — light to medium use cases (lists, clipping documents, book notes) — these types of notes are helpful but not immediately valuable to them.

But for the hardcore note-takers, those who take notes on lessons, articles, documents, reads, research and more — this becomes a feature that continues to uncover more insights for their learning.

For the masses, unless an application had this already. This feature or under-lying ability wouldn’t be useful — for the sake it requires a manual education and implementation.

For people taking notes lightly, they don’t have time for this — and without the context to how it could be helpful to recall and development — wouldn’t see the return on investment immediately for the time taken.

That’s why the status of Obsidian and Roam will continue to be hobbyist, until they implement some form of contextual auto-tagging.

📝 Mem, Hypernotes or Evernote