Out of Pocket Mozilla quietly announced that it’s calling it quits on Pocket, the time-shifted reading app it acquired in 2017. The news didn’t make a big splash, but it caught my eye as it overlaps with a bit of my own professional history.
Years ago, I was an advisor to Readability, a pioneer in the read-it-later app space—Apple used the open source version of their code to build Safari’s Reader view—and I remember thinking, even back then, that Pocket’s earlier incarnation might become the one the beat.
They were quickly building features the audience actually wanted and stacking up the funding to make it happen. Critically, they were also quietly sidestepping much of the angst Readability and Instapaper were kicking up with traditional publishers, who still thought of anything happening with their content outside of their websites as theft. (Indeed, I had a palpable sense at the time that my invited presence as a consultant at Readability was meant to double as a kind of diplomatic cover: a familiar face that signaled to publishers someone from their own ranks was okay with this kind of thing. For the record, I was, and still am.)
Mozilla was both an unlikely buyer and an intriguing fit. Nonprofit foundations are hardly known for creating the “exit events” venture funders lust for, and they were entirely untested to boot—Pocket was their first acquisition. But the pairing had a certain appeal. Both had a principled respect for users and the content they were built to present.
I’m genuinely sad to see Pocket go, and think we’re worse off with fewer tools like it. Time-shifted reading remains essential to me. I use Instapaper daily, and occasionally put Omnivore through its paces. I don’t know how others survive without them. (My hunch is more organized folks are using multivariate note-taking apps like Notion and Obsidian, but that the majority of users are straight-up leaving a bazillion tabs open in their browsers, a thought that sends shivers down my OCD-afflicted spine.)
Hat tip to NiemanLab’s indispensable daily newsletter for the heads-up on this.