Back in May, Mozilla announced their decision to shut down Pocket, which they went through with on July 8th, leaving Kobo users without any official way to send web articles to Kobo devices.
Pocket support was one of the selling points for Kobo ereaders, and Pocket was something that other brands didn’t have built-in. But now Kobo ereaders are without Pocket support too, and Kobo has not provided any alternatives.
Some people have switched to using Instapaper or Wallabag, but those alternatives aren’t integrated with Kobo’s software like Pocket was so the process isn’t as streamlined, especially with Kobo lacking any kind of Send-To-Kobo service to send articles and ebooks to Kobo devices.
Kobo’s CEO has been making promises on social media about a solution to the Pocket closure coming soon, but it sounds like there’s a good chance it will be a subscription or paid service.
The thing about Kobo that most people seem to forget is they’re just a small company that sells ebooks and audiobooks, along with a few ereaders. They don’t sell other products and run web services like Amazon. Offering a service similar to Pocket is out of their wheelhouse, and it isn’t something they can easily throw together like some other companies could (that’s why they relied on Pocket to do the heavy lifting).
It’s gotten to the point where Kobo rarely even updates the software on their ereaders anymore (most of their devices haven’t been updated since last October) so it’s not like they have an active team of software developers that can work on putting together a new article clipping service in short order. You’d think Rakuten could jump in and help with that kind of stuff, but they don’t seem to do much of anything when it comes to Kobo’s business.
To Kobo’s credit, at least they’ve removed all mention of Kobo ereaders supporting Pocket for web articles on the product pages of their website. It’s a shame they couldn’t come up with an alternative before the cutoff date, but maybe they’re working on something now.
Update: Kobo announced on social media that they’re partnering with Instapaper, and they plan to have things up and running again by the end of summer.
What is Rakuten’s interest in Kobo? I am amazed that Rakuten’s management sits idle, when Kobo doesn’t have any B&W readers in the 7-8” range to sell. Meanwhile, new Libra 2s are selling for north of $300 on EBay, when available.
I so rarely used Pocket, I’m not going to miss it.
I feel badly for those who bought their Kobo devices primarily because of the Pocket integration though. I certainly hope Kobo comes up with something for those folks, but I suspect it’s not a high priority, because it’s probably a fairly small number of customers who make heavy use of the feature.
If they were going to offer something to keep the MOST customers happy, it would be reading position and annotation sync for side-loaded content. And they haven’t done THAT, so it might be advised for Pocket fans to find alternate ways to get their articles to their readers rather than rely on Kobo to provide a solution any time soon.
I was a heavy pocket user on Kobo…articles were easy to save for later and pleasant to read. Probably will not be replaced.
Same here.
If you are comfortable installing open source software on your Kobo, this is an option:
https://github.com/quicklywilliam/ereader
I find it confusingly retarded to keep mentioning Kobo in regards to the Mozilla Corporation’s decision to end-of-life the Pocket initiative. This whole matter has literally NOTHING to do with Kobo, as it it is somehow the responsibility of an unaffiliated corporation, Rakuten, to do anything about it. Oh sure, they advertised support for the protocol and API, but they aren’t responsible for maintaining support, nor are they required to replace the service. If Adobe goes bankrupt tomorrow and shuts down, is it somehow Rakuten’s responsibility to continue supporting and replacing their Adobe DRM architecture? I just don’t understand the mentality.
This entire conversation and topic is stupid and annoying. Anyone using Kobo devices seriously as an e-reader and not to post click bait reviews or listicles online and then bin the device or sell it, already uses a computer with Calibre and they certainly aren’t having any problems transferring content to and from the Kobo. Unless you mean to tell me that there is some hidden segment of the population that insists on sending massive amounts of webpages and files to ther Kobo from their phone or tablet, and not just either reading them there or plugging the kobo into their mobile device using a usb-c cable and copying the files? I have a pdf converter on my phone and ipad, it isn’t hard to bulk convert files. Page > save to file > save to pdf converter > export. that’s even when I can be bothered and it isn’t just a pdf anyway, and I could just download the file using the experimental browser or copy paste. This is just so dumb.
How do you really feel?
Well, it wouldn’t be a problem if Kobo didn’t rely on using 3rd party services for everything instead of creating their own services. They outsourced web articles to Pocket, cloud storage to Dropbox, repairs to iFixit, library ebooks through Overdrive, their notetaking app to some company I can’t remember the name of. So yeah, it falls on Kobo when one of those services stops working or stops being supported when they are advertising them as features on their devices.
Quote:
“Unless you mean to tell me that there is some hidden segment of the population that insists on sending massive amounts of webpages and files to ther Kobo from their phone or tablet, and not just either reading them there or plugging the kobo into their mobile device using a usb-c cable and copying the files?”
Yes there are people who do that….including me. I see articles I want to read later, so I send them to Pocket from my computer/phone 100% of the time and read 80%+ of them on my Kobos. Now I have to find an alternative and so far none of them are as good.
I paid for Pocket and I’d be happy to pay for a Kobo alternative but I’m not holding my breath.
I avoid plugging my Kobo into my computer like the plague. I sync massive amounts of library books from Overdrive without plugging in, and Pocket was great for web fiction or comics. Yes I could do what you described, and I used to do it way back when, but it feels like the dark ages compared to how convenient it was with Pocket.
Try chamomile tea and deep breathing.
No wonder Mozilla shut down Pocket. So few people were using it in recent years that it just wasn’t worth paying for the servers and developers anymore. Now Mozilla focuses on other services where they can make more money by selling every bit of their users’ data.
I’m sorry about the people who loved Pocket, but on the other hand, one less data leaking service in kobo devices.
“…it’s not like they have an active team of software developers” Excuse me, what? Look at their new Kobo app for iOS. No wonder they didn’t do updates for e-readers (not that there was anything missing anyway). They worked hard to make the app completely new from scratch and the result is hands down the best looking and working ereading app on the App Store. Now that is finished, I can imagine they can move to other projects. They definitely have a very capable team of developers. They definitely do much better job than Kindle team ever did.
Software engineer here. This is why the iOS app update might not indicate that Kobo has a great engineering team:
– What you are seeing is the work of the UX team, as a user, you have no way of knowing what’s under the hood and whether the developers are skilled or not.
– They might have hired a 3rd-party agency to update the app, much like Bethesda has done it with their Oblivion remaster. This doesn’t mean that the team isn’t great but it does mean that the team has already moved on to work on a different project for a different customer. It’s a very likely scenario for a company like Kobo that doesn’t redesign it’s app or introduce a lot of new features on a regular basis.
– Being a great iOS developer doesn’t translate into being any good with developing stuff for e-ink devices.
Kobo is not a giant like Amazon. Budget challenges must be a real challenge. Hopefully they will focus on new devices….a Libra BW and a large 300 dpi device in color or black and white.
If they can produce a Pocket replacement great.
Those guys seem to often write the same articles after you wrote them first…
Those guys have no shame. I noted it a couple weeks ago. Scavenging ideas. Sad.
https://blog.instapaper.com/
Guess who’s taking over from Pocket?