Image: Foundry
Pocket’s imminent demise has been bemoaned across the industry. Now, one entrepreneur has expressed interest in keeping it alive. Kevin Rose—who founded Digg.com, became a venture capitalist, and is now trying to bring Digg back—has petitioned Mozilla to let Digg take over Pocket.
Rose published a tweet on X (via TechCrunch, which is owned by Foundry but operates independently of PCWorld) that both supports Pocket and petitions Mozilla to keep it going. “We love Pocket at @digg, happy to take it over and continue to support your users for years to come!”
On May 22nd, Mozilla said that it would shut down both Pocket and Fakespot. Fakespot analyzes the authenticity of user reviews. Pocket, however, was a subscription service that allowed users to save posts and online articles for later—basically a bookmark, though Mozilla pitched it as an “online discovery app.”
That description dovetails nicely with what Digg was, and presumably what it could be again. In 2010, Digg released a major redesign of its site, and users rebelled for a number of reasons, including a virtual monopoly of the site by a handful of power users as well as the removal of the “downvote” button. Now, Rose has a chance to once again win the internet’s favor with Digg’s revival—and this time he’s partnering with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit. In the tweet, Rose also tagged Peter Rojas, who founded Gizmodo, Engadget, and Joystiq.
If nothing else, Rose’s tweet won the upcoming revamped Digg some free publicity, which is what the site will need to succeed.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.