Introducing Pocket Preferences: Discover Better Content from Your Favorite Apps
Today we launched Pocket 5.0, making it easier for you to quickly read, watch, and view the things you care about. We’re excited to announce a new feature called Pocket Preferences.
Here at Pocket we love apps like Zite, Twitter, Flipboard, and Feedly that help you discover great content. They each have Pocket built-in to make it easy to save anything you discover and consume it on your own time. In fact, there are over 700 apps that connect with Pocket today.
With Pocket Preferences, there is no longer a need to manually configure your content categories or import a set of RSS feeds like in the days of Google Reader. The topics, sites and authors you save most to Pocket are now portable, and can be shared with other apps automatically.
To see how it all works, you can watch our announcement from earlier today, or continue reading.
Pocket Preferences improves the apps you connect with Pocket in two key ways:
Quick Setup Personalized to You
When you sign up for new apps, you often have to manually select from a generic list of pre-determined “interests” before you actually start seeing any articles or videos.
Now, a simple tap to connect your Pocket account will automatically personalize the app’s content recommendations based on the topics, sites and authors you’ve saved to Pocket. You can start discovering content you’re interested in immediately.
Dynamic Content that Stays Fresh with Your Interests
Your interests are detailed, vibrant, and change dynamically over time. Let’s say you decide to run a half-marathon and want to learn more about training tips and techniques. Before Preferences, you’d have to manually add these interests to apps and then remove the interest when you’d shifted to training for a triathlon.
Now the apps you love are able to automatically adapt to your preferred topics and sites as they change, and continually show you fresh content you’ll care about.
How to Get Pocket Preferences
Let your favorite apps know that you’d like them to support Pocket Preferences. For apps that do use Preferences, just connect your Pocket account. Your topics, sites and authors will automatically be updated whenever you save to Pocket.
Try It Now
Today you can try out Pocket Preferences for yourself on Zite. Next week, you’ll be able to find it on Hack Later. These two apps have begun to integrate Pocket Preferences to create an entirely new experience around how you discover content.
Zite is an intelligent magazine that helps you discover interesting things to read and view. When you open Zite, connect with your Pocket account and you’ll see instant suggestions for topics to follow. Your content will also stay fresh with your changing interests. Get set up with Zite for both iOS and Android.
Hack Later is a lightweight Hacker News client for iOS. Connecting your Pocket account will give you suggestions for Hacker News articles to view, based on the types of content you save to Pocket. Check out Hack Later for iOS.
Pocket Preferences: Entirely Yours
You can take your preferences to any app that supports it. It’s entirely up to you what apps you want to use it with.
Developers: Request Early Access
Sign up to request early access to the Pocket Preferences API for the fastest, most powerful way to get new users started and improve retention and engagement.