
Pocket’s 30M Users Are Great for Publishers - cpeterso
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-09/pocket-s-30-million-users-are-great-for-publishers
======
krn
> Pocket is also experimenting with personalizing recommendations for certain
> users based partly on each person’s Firefox browsing history.

Why does an open-source web browser have a proprietary cloud synchronization
service installed by default?

EDIT: I know that Pocket is owned by Mozilla. It doesn't change anything.

~~~
pietroglyph
Mozilla actually owns pocket now; they seem to believe that giving people
recommendations from around the web is the best way to combat walled gardens
who want all your content going through _them_. This article is pretty
revealing: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-
po...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-pocket/)

I still don't think it should be proprietary, and I don't use it, so

    
    
      extensions.pocket.enabled = false
    

is my friend.

~~~
swiley
I wish that where off by default, it actually makes me feel uncomfortable
installing firefox on my laptop at work even though it really is better than
chrome when you want to read docs and don't have a ton of free memory.

~~~
infinityplus1
So, what do you use? Chrome is more comfortable?

~~~
swiley
Yes, chrome doesn't dump news articles on my screen every time I open a new
tab.

I use firefox anyway, it just makes me uncomfortable.

~~~
guu
Turn off site recommendations:
[https://help.getpocket.com/article/1147-hiding-pocket-in-
you...](https://help.getpocket.com/article/1147-hiding-pocket-in-your-firefox-
new-tab)

Disabling Pocket: [https://help.getpocket.com/article/1025-disabling-save-to-
po...](https://help.getpocket.com/article/1025-disabling-save-to-pocket-
features-in-firefox)

------
thinkpad20
Not having read the article, I’ll just chime in and say anecdotally that since
I use Firefox on my iPhone I’ve clicked on numerous Pocket articles suggested
on the new tab screen. Even though they only show two suggestions at a time,
they tend to be really interesting reads and fit in well with my interests.
Clearly they have a good algorithm.

------
data4lyfe
Pocket is one of my most used apps on my iPhone. It's fantastic, simple, and
best of all truly an app I believe the more time I put into it, the better I
feel about how I've used my time, which I can't say for a lot of the social
media and game apps that are out there today.

------
CharlesW
> _Pocket is, however, sending almost 75 percent more traffic to Parse.ly’s
> publisher network than it was at the start of 2018._

That's meaningless without knowing what percentage of traffic Pocket
represents to Parse.ly. Did it go from (for example) 5% to 8.75%? Or 0.1% to
0.175%?

------
AJRF
I recently moved from Pocket to Instapaper because of the way Pocket seems to
be adding all these things to get in your way.

I dislike Instapaper too because of the whole GDPR thing.

I should engineer a solution I like, but could do with some help generating
text from the articles. What is the best way of doing that? Something like
Mozilla Fathom?

~~~
heinrichf
[https://github.com/mozilla/readability](https://github.com/mozilla/readability)
(that powers Firefox's reading mode)

[https://github.com/buriy/python-readability](https://github.com/buriy/python-
readability)

[https://github.com/goose3/goose3](https://github.com/goose3/goose3)

[https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper](https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper)

For a complete solution, you can also look at Wallabag, which can be self-
hosted.

~~~
AJRF
Thanks, I threw together a little nodejs+express API using Readability and wow
its very powerful

------
naner
Odd that people have privacy issues with Pocket but not embedding a search
engine in the awesome bar. At the end of the day Mozilla has to pay the bills
and Pocket looks like an unoffensive way to do so.

~~~
phobosdeimos
I do. I removed all the integrated search engines from FF.

You are right, Mozilla needs to pay the bills. I accept that and don't hold a
grudge. But they are not getting anything from me. I use FF to get away from
the internet business model.

------
78h321sadfh7z
Pocket is a nice idea, but probably a poor substitute for Search Engine money.

If it worked, Mozilla would publish real numbers. (The way Mozilla works
nowadays, they would probably publish a blog post with an overly excited tone
describing how Pocket saves the internet, destroys fake news and even averts
climate change)

Just like they don't publish real data anymore for Firefox absolute user
numbers, which have gone downhill in recent years.

The 75% number is meaningless without revenue numbers and an explanation what
this 75% even pertains to. There shuold be around 100 Million Quantum users
who have Pocket in their new-tab section.

Finding a long-term strategy will be a challenge for Mozilla. Since the
browser is losing more and more users, if they don't invent themselves
completely new there will be no way to keep the revenue stable.

~~~
dessant
It indeed seems like Mozilla does not publish user stats for Firefox, though
detailed statistics for AMO are still available.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/statistics/addons_in_use/?l...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/statistics/addons_in_use/?last=365)

~~~
78h321sadfh7z
When you look at the major Addons, usage is consistently going down.

Mozilla pulled the plug for the user raw data after this blog post:

[https://andreasgal.com/2017/07/19/firefox-marketshare-
revisi...](https://andreasgal.com/2017/07/19/firefox-marketshare-revisited/)

------
confounded
I see why Mozilla want to do this sort of thing, and I also understand why
lots of people like it.

But I do wish Mozilla would make a version of Firefox available for people
that just want a fully-FOSS browser.

The efforts of various GNU+Linux distributions to do this (Icecat, Abrowser)
are fantastic, but ultimately it’s too difficult for me to judge how quickly
they can act on security issues to feel comfortable using them.

I’d have no problem sending telemetry data back if I could get a browser
binary with Widevine DRM, Pocket etc. completely removed.

I’d also be more inclined to send Mozilla cold hard cash.

------
durpleDrank
I recently switched from Pocket to Instapaper. Instapaper is more stable
without a doubt. When I used the pocket app on my phone, MULTIPLE
PHONES/TABLETS (at least 5), I would get stuck in home screen loops that I was
unable to exit out of without rebooting. I tried contacting their support but
they were not effective. When it works, it was my favorite app. I got top %5
reader awards from them 3 years in a row.

I would have gladly paid for a premium edition but their lack of support,
victim blaming, and passive aggressive responses to features I suggested left
me with a bad taste in my mouth. So far, Instapaper is everything I was hoping
pocket to be. The text to speech feature actually works, it's stable, and the
interface is much cleaner and easier to use.

I don't usually write yelp tier reviews like this on HN but I figured I would
express myself just in case someone has the same sentiment as me (they should
immediately switch to Instapaper).

It is night and day in terms of quality.

~~~
subpixel
If, like Instapaper, Pocket strips out publisher ads and gives you a pleasant
reading experience, why would publishers pay a fee for Pocket to promote
articles?

If Pocket doesn’t strip publisher ads and give you a pleasant reading
experience, why use Pocket?

------
Simulacra
I live on Pocket and absolutely love the service.

------
tonystubblebine
Ok. How do you growth hack pocket now?

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cam3ham
pocket is long dead

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paulie_a
I assume I am is considered a user.. but I quite frankly haven't used it 2
years. That 30 million is probably grossely exaggerated.

