Out of Pocket
It’s both sad and not at all surprising. After letting it languish for years, Mozilla has now put Pocket out to pasture. And it will be formally slaughtered in October. Along with all your saved items. All those glorious saved items that you never got to but were totally just about to.
I tease because I love.
I was an early user of Pocket back when it was still called ‘Read It Later’. That name said literally all you needed to know about what the service did. It was a bookmarking service to yes, be able to read something later. In an era of increasingly open tabs, and when web browsers still gushed leaky memory like a geyser, it was a godsend. And when it transformed into a fully formed service, just as mobile apps were rising, it was perfect. You could save something you came across while browsing the web and yes, read it later on your phone. The device in your pocket.
Pocket quickly became my most-used app and I, at one point, became the top overall user of the service, I was reliably informed. Top 1% eat your eyes out.
I also grew closer to the company that made pocket, morphing from a journalist where it was the most important tool in my article writing tool belt to an investor where it was the most important tool in my email writing tool belt. By the time I joined GV in 2013, they had actually already invested in Pocket, and it was fun to meet up with co-founder Nate Weiner and that team from time to time to debate where they could take the service in the ever-evolving landscape of the web and social media.
And that quickly veered into the world of recommendations, since Pocket, beyond simply housing your articles, also knew quite a bit about you based on what you were saving to read later. One of the OG interest graphs! At various points, I wondered if it wouldn’t find a natural home within Twitter, back when Twitter was still relatively young and fun. Or then Medium. Or perhaps even Amazon, as merging a read-it-later service with the ultimate distraction-free reading product, the Kindle seemed like a natural fit.1
Ultimately, they found a home at Mozilla. At the time the company was buying up tools to hopefully entice people to give Firefox another go, long after that browser’s star had faded in the light of Chrome. It was a good enough idea, but they clearly could never figure out the right business model. That, mixed with the myriad other issues Mozilla has going on — first and foremost, the potential loss of nearly all of their revenue if the Google Search deal goes away — sealed Pocket’s fate.2
At the same time, other services rose to fill the gaps and try to move the still-very-much-needed functionality forward. Marco Arment’s Instapaper has changed hands a few times, but is still alive and well under the guidance of Brian Donohue, who took it off of Pinterest’s also busy-with-other-things hands. Readwise has branched into this space after getting a toehold in the content highlighting market. Meanwhile, I went on to invest in a newfangled Pocket of sorts in Matter.
Ben Springwater, Matter’s co-founder and CEO, shared some of his own thoughts on Pocket’s demise yesterday as it was the service that got him hooked on the space as well. And with Xitter now shattered into a million arguments, and links seemingly now an enemy on certain social networks, something in this space is arguably more needed than ever. Especially when you consider the ramifications of AI mixed with such content…
Anyway, I won’t upsell you on Matter,3 this is really just a pouring one out for an old friend in Pocket. A reading companion I spent countless hours of my life with. Rest in peace, old friend and thank you for your service.
1 Pocket ended up striking a deal with Rakutan, installing the app on their Kobo e-reader devices.
2 Firefox is another piece of software which holds a special place in my heart. As a PC user back in the day, it freed me from Internet Explorer. And as a web developer back in the day, it freed me from Internet Explorer. I hope Mozilla can find focus and a path forward for Firefox. Browsers are hot again, didn't you hear?
3 They'll do that themselves :)