Web text saving app Read It Later announced a rebranding of its service today, along with some new features. The company has replaced the old moniker with “Pocket,” updated its UI and more.
Read It Later began in 2007, close to the iPhone launch, and has gathered a base of more than 4.5 million users. The pocket service is available on iPhone, iPad, Android tablets and smartphones as well as the Amazon app store and the Kindle Fire.
Many of the features from the old brand are retained; you can save any page of text found online to your Pocket. All the apps that worked with Read It Later do so with Pocket., and you can use your account to save stories from apps like Twitter, Flipboard and 300 others. There are two font choices for articles, and a toolbar to allow for night mode, favoriting and sharing.
The new. Pocket is now free for everyone, whereas Read It Later came in a $2.99 form. Founder Nathan Weiner told TNW that making the app free is part of a “well planned process”. Weiner also said that giving the product away allows an easier way for people to understand the benefit of the application.
“Once a user starts using us, they use us for years. From a business perspective, having a user pay $2.99 up-front, once, and then use the app for 4 years doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Weiner said.
The design is cleaner, and lighter than its predecessor. Images can be ‘Pocketed’ using the image URL. Videos can also be pocketed using the YouTube or Vimeo URL; YouTube seems to be the number one most-saved domain. Offline viewing of the videos isn’t available.
Alongside Pocket in the text saving space are competitors Instapaper and Readability, however Pocket isn’t relegated to only text.
