How is bnotes Different?
If you and I just met and you were to ask me the question, “What is bnotes?” I would say something along the lines of, “Have you ever heard of Slack?” and if the answer was “Yes,” then I would say, “It’s kind of like Slack meets Google Docs” or “It’s a long-form version of Slack.”
Most people know what Slack is, but I’ve learned over time that all Slack users are not created equal in terms of their understanding or time spent with the service. With that, for those of you who are intimately familiar with the inner workings of Slack as a team communications tool, you know that the app scales team messaging well.
Scaling Docs vs Scaling Messages
So, here’s where bnotes is different — when you think about how to document and scale thoughts, ideas, and strategies, Slack doesn’t provide great utility for that function.
In this case, when considering the above as a desired outcome, most people default to Google Docs or Evernote, and now Notion, which has come on the scene in a big way. Why choose bnotes over any of these? For starters, the user experience.
The scale of Slack’s organization and structure appealed to me, and I took a couple of pages out of their UX (user experience) book and added some of our secret sauce to ensure that information has context and can be found easily when you need it. Unlike Google Docs and Evernote, bnotes doesn’t use folders to organize information, rather we use Channels (read why Channels make the most sense). Regarding Notion, I’ll address this in another blog post (people ask me about this one quite often as well).
In considering what that means from an organization and structure standpoint, bnotes has
- Workspaces — organizations, products, projects, or companies
- Channels — categories or collections of notes
- Notes — documented ideas, thoughts, and strategies
- Tags — attributes used to filter notes (#marketing)
Slack Channel : bnotes Channel on Desktop
In the above image, you are looking at our design channel in Slack and likewise, our Design Channel in bnotes. In the bnotes example, you’ll find an old note that was created when I had the idea to create the “Discuss” feature. I published the note to the Design Channel because I wanted my designer to start getting a feel for how “discussions” were different from collaboration.” This note ultimately turned into a strategic plan to build out the “Discuss” functionality inside a note.
Per above, you can’t create a contained information file like a note or doc inside Slack.
Slack Feed : bnotes Feed on Mobile
Thoughts or Questions?
Drop me a line — hello@bnotes.co or leave a comment below.
