Add another marker in the Internet/Tech graveyard. Mozilla has announced that it will shutting down Pocket on July 8th. Nothing lasts forever.
It’s not a surprise to me given how poorly the app was treated after Mozilla took it over in 2017. The read it later service became almost unusable and I had gradually moved away from my reliance on it for bookmarking web links. My move away quickened once they decided to discontinue the Mac app. Making it a web only app ironically led to a pretty horrible user experience.
Pocket joins other apps like Evernote that were once old standbys that in order to grow and sustain felt like they needed to add feature upon feature in order to compete and attract funding and subscribers. You can’t blame anyone for trying to make a buck and run a company. You can blame them for doing such a poor job of it.
Mozilla has made a way for users to archive links they’ve saved with instructions to be found in their post about closing the doors. Users have until October 8th to export their data.
Update: On Friday Digg co-founder Kevin Rose has offered to step in and take over Pocket to save it from its demise. Anything’s possible I guess.
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Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 