#get pocket

I was a little sad to see my archive was completely gone a couple of days ago. I don’t know how many of you use it, but it’s frustrating to have lost what few things I really wanted to hold onto . . . . I don’t stop to back up my settings every single time I add something to the archive so - they are simply lost.

                                            I love Pocket.  It has changed a lot of my daily routine.  In the past, when I saw an article I wanted to read later on Twitter, I used to email the tweet to myself, this made my inbox a mess.  When browsing the web, or going through the my Twitter feed on my computer, if there was an article I wanted to read later, I would either bookmark it, or keep an absurd amount of tabs open, and get to them when I could...with Google chrome this would often crash my browser, or bring my computer to a painfully slow crawl.  Pocket changed everything instantly.  I now add everything to Pocket, I can do this directly from my browser, or the Twitter app on my iPhone.  I can also download the articles and read them offline on my phone, this has made subway rides incredibly more productive.  Pocket has also focused my online reading routine.  If I want to take a break from doing work, I can tell myself I will read four articles on Pocket, and be done.  When I was emailing links to myself, I was in a constant battle to clear out the inbox, often distracting myself for long periods of time.  Ok, so clearly I am a fan of Pocket, but I still think it could get a lot better.  Here are three of my wishes for the product.

Pocket Paper: I consume a ton of online content- articles, videos, blog posts, quotes, pictures, etc. A lot of the content I discover through Twitter, then save to pocket, consume it, and then often want to share it with my close friends.  I email my close friends multiple times throughout the day with interesting stuff I discover on the web, and many friends email me things that they find.  There has to be a better way, and I think Pocket is in the unique position to improve on sharing content.  What if each user could create a Pocket Paper, a page where they can select content from their own Pocket queue, that will then be available for any of their friends to visit, and see the content that you have reccomended.  When selecting a specific article to put on your Pocket page, you could even tag certain people whom you think would have a particular interest in that piece of content, guaranteeing that they receive a notification to visit your page.  I think Pocket Paper would not only give people a reason to save more stuff to Pocket, but also would help them attract new users, by having their already existing user base invite their friends to engage with content on Pocket.  This would also open the door to allowing friends to converse about pieces of content on someone’s Pocket paper.  Facebook is not really the space to have those conversations, and Twitter still struggles with conversations, especially among multiple people.  I think Pocket Paper would be awesome!

Social Sharing: This one seems more obvious, and I’m sure the team will soon introduce this to the product, but some social sharing buttons on Pocket would be a huge help.  Often after reading an article I might feel compelled to share it to Twitter or Facebook, let me do that with a click of a button, with the ability to add a comment if I want to.  Once again, sharing through Pocket will increase awareness of the product, and hopefully bring new users to the service.

Popular Pockets: Create a dashboard where you can see what other users have “Pocketed.”  This can be private, by not identifying specific users, but be based on the aggregate user base. Have trending articles, and you could even organize them by areas of interest: sports, technology, entertainment, etc.  This would be a great discovery tool for people who want new ways to find content beyond their social graphs.

I love Pocket, and I look forward to seeing how the product will continue to evolve in the future.

Anne Helmond is a PhD candidate with the Digital Methods Initiative, the new media PhD program at the Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. She joined the Digital Methods Initiative with its initiation in 2007 as an analyst-designer. In her research she focuses on software-engine relations in the blogosphere and cross-syndication politics in social media. She also teaches new media courses in the Media Studies department and blogs about her research on http://www.annehelmond.nl. Her research interests include digital methods, software studies, platform studies, social media and syndication protocols.

Here are Anne's first five...

"In August 2007 I described my daily blogging routine on my own blog by consciously looking at which websites I visit daily and why. In 2007 my morning routine was as follows: I opened Thunderbird for my email and then Firefox as my browser to visit my start page Netvibes which I used for my feeds, then I would look at my blog’s statistics through a WordPress plugin, and then I would look at the MyBlogLog sidebar widget to find out more about my blog visitors and I would end with a confrontation with my latest blog post which would immediately prompt me to write a new one. I’m very excited to revisit and reflect on my daily routine five years later by providing my First/Top 5. The first thing that strikes me is that my routine has changed significantly because I usually check my phone first (Twitter, Instagram and email) before turning on my laptop."

https://twitter.com/

"Twitter is one of my favorites and I use it for different purposes. Personally I use it for chatting and entertainment, and professionally I use it to keep up-to-date with new blog posts and articles in my field (New Media Studies/Software Studies), to remotely follow conferences and to connect with scholars in the field."

http://www.google.com/reader/view/ "I use Google Reader to keep up with all my website and blog subscriptions. I have neatly categorized everything so that during busy times I can mark the LOLblogs and Design categories as read and focus on the blogs and articles in New Media Blogs, Software Studies, Search Engine Blogs and Academic Journals."

http://getpocket.com/ "This is currently my favorite service to save articles to read later. While I have collected more articles to read ‘later’ than I will ever be able to read I do try to read a few every other day. The service stores webpages and blogposts in a clean readable format which also makes it a good anti-cluttering reading tool and all saved articles can be accessed through multiple devices (phone, tablet, web). I send articles from multiple social media platforms to this one single location using one of the smartest services on the web: If This, then That. IFTTT allows you to create task ‘recipes’ for combining web services and eliminates the technical knowledge of writing scripts to combine APIs."

http://screenshotsofdespair.tumblr.com/ "While this Tumblr is in my Google Reader it deserves to be highlighted. It describes itself as “a tumblr cataloguing online messages that evoke feelings of despair.” It looks at the other side of the ‘Happy Web’ where we Like and Friend by focussing on interface messages that make us feel sad, lonely, estranged, abandoned, worthless and confused."

http://www.readwriteweb.com/ "One of the oldest and best blogs on anything that is happening on the web. While it keeps me up-to-date with what is happening in the industry I usually quickly skim through the articles announcing a new product, feature or startup as I prefer the longer reflective articles on the state of the web."