Today at a special event in San Francisco, Evernote CEO Phil Libin unveiled Trunk, a new showcase of products, services, and hardware devices that have integrated Evernote. The idea is to help users enchance their Evernote experience with features they may want but that Evernote doesn’t offer by default, like Voice Transcription (via services like Dial2Do, pliq.me, and QuickTate), PDF annotation, and business card scanning. Libin says that at launch there are over 100 items available to users; some are brand new, and others have featured Evernote for a while.
The Trunk breaks up these integrations by category, including mobile (iPhone, Android, etc), hardware, and web service-based apps. One focus for the Trunk is to help your memories “bridge to the social web”. Libin says that historically, Evernote has been inherently anti-social, but that in some cases you may want to remember elements from social applications. To address that, Seesmic took the stage to detail a feature that allows users to send items from their streams to their Evernote accounts, creating so-called “social memories”.
In the future Libin says there will be “a lot more functionality” to the Trunk (it’s clear that Evernote is looking to become a platform for memory services and programs). One area Evernote is excited is games — memory and braintraining games are in the works. And he says there are plenty of new upcoming hardware and software implementations as well.
In terms of monetization, Libin says many of the apps and services in the Trunk are free. In the future there will be “in-trunk commerce” where you can click a button to add certain functionality for Evernote (and pay the third party developer). There will be an affiliate program and an integrated rev-share program as well. Monetization features will be coming this winter.
