<p><pre><code>  &gt; I&#x27;m a bit annoyed about this contemporary mentality that if
  &gt; an idea can&#x27;t be explained in five seconds or doesn&#x27;t fit
  &gt; in a tweet, there is something wrong with the idea.
</code></pre>
I agree that not all products should be explainable in five seconds. But their <i>value proposition</i> should be explainable in five seconds.<p>And if the product can&#x27;t be explained in five seconds to someone who is not a specialist in the field, or a regular user, so be it.<p>But if someone has been using the product for a year, they ought to be able to grasp and articulate the value proposition. If most of your long-time users can&#x27;t explain what the product dos for them, you have a problem.<p>Finally, if each long-time user articulates what it does for them, but every explanation is different, you have a coherence problem. That&#x27;s fundamentally what is being explained in the post:<p>Evernote itself can&#x27;t explain what it does, and each happy user has a different explanation, based on the 5% of the product they happen to use.<p>This makes it nearly impossible to focus efforts on giving any one user an amazing experience.