With Pocket, our goal has always been to help you spend more time with the stories that matter to you. Yet, when it comes to actually discovering those stories, it’s a noisy world out there: many of the channels we use to discover the stories we’re interested in operate in real-time, meaning what’s good is constantly being forced to compete with what’s new.
We believe we can do better. This is why, in August, we launched Recommendations, to give you a single place to easily find the things you want to read and watch, with none of the noise.
Since then, we’ve been working on some pretty significant improvements that make your Recommended feed better and more personal.
Millions of people — including your friends, tastemakers, and the writers and editors behind the stories you love — have already been using Pocket to curate the best, most interesting stories on the Web. Starting today, you can follow them to see what they’re publicly recommending as being worthy of your time and attention.
In a similar vein, you can also begin making your own recommendations, sharing the best of what you’re reading and watching within Pocket with a bigger audience.
Here’s the rundown of what’s new:
Follow Interesting People to See What They’re Recommending:
The next time you open Pocket, quickly set up your new Recommended feed. Find who else you know already recommending on Pocket by connecting your address book, Twitter, and Facebook accounts. We’ll also help you out by suggesting a few people we think are making great recommendations. If you want to explore a bit, tap any person’s photo to view their profile and see what they’ve recommended.
Once you’ve followed someone, you’ll begin seeing their recommendations in your Recommended feed. Unlike other newsfeeds you’re used to, however, your Recommended feed isn’t ordered chronologically, meaning you likely won’t see every possible recommendation surfaced by the people you follow. This is by design. Instead, your Recommended feed is ordered and personalized to you, so it only shows you the recommendations you’ll be interested in, based on what you save, read, and watch in Pocket.
Recommend the Best of Your Pocket!
You can now recommend the most interesting things you’re reading and watching in Pocket with others.
Whether it’s entertaining, thought-provoking, hysterical, insightful, or simply relevant, the next time you’re in an article or video you think is noteworthy, simply tap the Recommend button to share it with your followers.
You can even highlight an excerpt and include that in your share (plus, add a comment for additional context).
Looking for inspiration? Open up your Favorites and see if you have anything from the past worth recommending!
Share Your Recommendations with Others:
Finally, anything you recommend in Pocket will appear on your profile, making it easy for others to follow you and see what you think is worth reading and watching.
You can find your profile here: http://getpocket.com/app/profile
Once you’ve recommended something, share your profile link with others so they can follow the great things you’re recommending. Don’t forget to give it a bit of personality by adding a bio and profile photo!
It’s important to note that everything you save to Pocket is, and will always remain private. Only what you choose to Recommend will appear in your profile and in your followers’ Recommended feed.
A home for everything you want to read and watch:
We’ve been really excited to release this latest update to all of you for quite some time now (a huge shoutout to the thousands of people who’ve helped us test this in Beta for the last couple months 🎉🎉🎉 you guys are the best).
Our hope with the new Recommended feed is that Pocket becomes a place to not only capture, read, and watch the stories that interest you most, but to discover and recommend them as well.
Today, you can check out your new Recommended feed on Android and iOS (Web will be coming soon, don’t you worry!). And although we’ve got plenty of improvements and new functionality in the pipeline, we’d love to hear what you think of the new release, and how we can make Recommended even better for you.
Until then!
Team Pocket
