Popular Instapaper and Readability competitor Read It Later has totally rebranded. It’s now Pocket and it’s looking to be the latest cool app for saving content on the Internet for later. It also comes with a pleasant new price tag: free.
What’s different about Pocket? Well, it takes somewhat of a different aim than Read It Later. Instead of having a specific focus on saving articles, it now encourages saving images or video around the web too. In fact, YouTube was it’s #1 most saved domain name, so it’s evident that there’s a demand for saving more than just written content.
The apps for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire have a completely revamped UI. The new design features tiles for each web page you’ve “pocketed” and tapping them brings up a simplistic viewer along with some display preferences and sharing options. There is a version of Pocket available on the web as well with most of these features integrated.
Read It Later’s evolution to Pocket was by no means a desperate attempt to save a failing service like some other companies are known for. It had 4.5 million users already, making it the most popular read-later service. It never caught on as the “hip” one to have though; Instapaper holds that title. Out of the four main read-later services — Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, and Safari’s Reading List — three are now completely free. Instapaper’s app, which I happen to be a huge fan of, remains at $4.99 in the App Store and developer Marco Arment refuses to release a version for Android. I’m curious to see how Arment is going to respond to Pocket. I personally think Instapaper is worth every penny because of the love and attention he puts in to making it a truly quality app, but Pocket does make it seem a tad outdated.
You can grab Pocket for free on iOS, Android, or Kindle Fire.