Pocket Closing

Mozilla made a surprise announcement today that they are closing the Pocket read-it-later service. With nothing but a bland, corporate statement to go on, I imagine users have a fair amount of confusion about the move. I was actually looking at the Pocket entry on the App Store earlier in the day to see if it had been updated lately. I always had dreams of the service/app being improved, so I could go back to using it with a Kobo, which is a quite delightful combo. I had a Kobo a few years ago, and the sync with Pocket, while it could use a few features (like highlight sync), was key for me. I probably read more articles than books on the device. I kept this option in the back of my mind for a possible switch back.

I would have been extremely frustrated if I had bought another Kobo under the assumption that I could fulfill my use case of synchronizing with my saved articles from Pocket.

It is well known that Mozilla is going through financial troubles, but Pocket seemed like a successful part of their overall strategy. I enjoyed seeing the articles curated by the service when I opened a new tab in Firefox. The direct integration with the browser made both apps more appealing. The algorithm was good about learning from my reading activity and recommending articles that drew my interest. I’m sorry to see the demise of Pocket, even if I wasn’t a full user.