Taking Pocket Further with Mozilla
A letter from Pocket’s founder/CEO to Pocket users.
You may know Pocket as the app. The little button in your browser. The late-night reading companion. The reprieve from the noise. A place to find interesting content.
To us, the team building it, it means a mission that we care deeply about. One that might have begun with the simple goal of saving the articles you wanted to read later, but that today feels more pressing and relevant than ever before.
Pocket’s mission is to create a platform that enables people to save, share, and consume the content worthy of their time and attention. And by doing so, we hope to make it easier to spend time with more high-quality content, no matter how noisy it gets.
In a world where we are buried by content, where it’s become increasingly harder to find signal in the noise, truth from fiction, and even the value of our press and written word is being challenged, we need a platform where high-quality, thoughtful content and free speech can rise above the rest.
What matters most to us is our ability to make a real impact in the lives of our users and the world at large. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve found a powerful new ally in helping us achieve our mission, while building a better, healthier, and more interesting Internet in the process.
As of today, Pocket is joining forces with Mozilla.
Pocket will continue on as a wholly-owned, independent subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation. We’ll be staying in our office, and our name will still be on the wall. Our team isn’t changing and our existing roadmap has been reinforced and is clearer than ever. In fact, we have a few major updates up our sleeves that we are really excited to get into your hands in the coming months.
How does Mozilla fit into this equation? They’re adding fuel to our rocketship. We have worked closely with Mozilla as we partnered with their Firefox team, and established a deep trust with their team and vision. They have extraordinary resources, global scale, and reach to put Pocket in more places, and help us build an even better product, faster.
Together we are going to continue expanding the reach of high-quality content, while staying true to the values that drive both Pocket and Mozilla alike: Protecting the openness of the web and creating a content platform built around trust and privacy.
When I sat down to write the first version of Pocket – which just so happened to be a Firefox add-on – I had no idea where it would lead. Now, as I reflect upon the last 9 and a half years, I struggle to find the words to describe it. What started out as a late-night hack project has since employed over 60 different people throughout its history. People who have spent countless days and nights thinking and working on how to make an amazing product. It’s moved people across countries and over oceans. It’s a button that has been clicked over 3 billion times, enabling trillions of words to be read that may not have been otherwise. It’s been the source of millions of articles and thoughts to be shared, sparking conversations that are important and so very necessary.
But above all else, it has made an impact on you, our users.
As we have continued to grow both as a product and as a company, one thing hasn’t changed: Our passion for building a product we love, and the respect we have for you, our users. We hope that each of you know that we wake up every day thinking about how to make Pocket better for you. And starting today, now under the Mozilla banner, we’ll be doing just the same, for a long time to come.
If you have any questions about the news, we encourage you to reach out to the Pocket Community team – our number one priority is you!
Looking forward to what’s next!
– Nate (Pocket CEO/Founder) and the entire Pocket team
