Evernote overhauls Windows app with new social sharing features

Evernote, the powerhouse note-taking software suite and service released a huge update for Windows users today, including social sharing and features that will appeal to those who want to (or have always wanted to) use Evernote for writing more than just notes.

Perhaps the biggest aspect of the update is the inclusion of social sharing.

“Evernote, historically, has not been social — at all,” says Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote. “You go to Facebook when you fell like not being productive. You go to Evernote when you actually feel like getting something accomplished. That’s been our position.”

But that philosophy has changed, Libin says.

“What we realized over the past year or so is that those two halves of your life really need to be well-connected. So Evernote doesn’t have to social, but there has to be easy ways for you share your important stuff in Evernote with your friends and your social network.”

Windows users can now quickly share their notes via Facebook, Twitter, email and more with the click of a button. Clicking on the “Share” button will launch whatever application or web service that’s chosen, and posts the note accordingly. While it does make whatever notes the user has shared publicly available, they can be “unshared” at any time to restore privacy. Users can share notebooks as well, and Premium Evernote subscribers can also allow those who they share their notes and notebooks with to edit them.

Of course, this also means that any notes that are shared between users can be viewed locally. All shared notes becomes linked to the user’s Evernote account and can be viewed by clicking on the “Shared” tab. Evernote syncs these notebooks as they would all other notes for each and every user, they do sync shared notebooks less often. Manually syncing them before going offline is a good idea if you want to access them later.

There’s been some enhancements to Evernote catered to writers that shows it’s clearly more than just a note-taking solution. Writers who use Evernote extensively will praise the addition of the word and character counts in the viewing options. There’s also the ability to find and replace text, and indenting has been improved. These enhancements make Evernote a more compelling option as an all-in-one solution for their writing needs.

There are other features that come along with today’s update (such as improved Firefox syncing), and some bug fixes were taken care of as well. Those who use Evernote on the Windows platform have plenty to be happy with, and the application has made great strides on the platform with what they’ve added in this update.

The update for Evernote Windows users is available for download today.