Comments on: ReadItLater aims to be content shifting king

By: Drew

Drew — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:52:30 +0000

You can’t be the “content shifting king” when you don’t have auto-syncing working between some of your devices. It’s been a known issue for a while and yet nothing has been done. Focus on the small things or you’ll end up having people switching to competitors even though they originally chose your service. I did.

I agree with other do commentors that see ReadItLater as a feature. Thinking it’s a product will probably only make it’s function as a feature worse. Too bad.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:14:45 +0000

Actually Evernote is an excellent web clipper. You can save either the whole page or just the url. I liked RIL but find it much easier to save everything to one place.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:07:45 +0000

I use Evernote and Readitlater (the latter more regularly than the former, admittedly). They seem to do completely separate things really well, and I wouldn’t even conceive of using Evernote to archive web pages for future perusal.

This is what interests me:

“My idea is more along the concept of using it as a platform for shifting content, no matter where you are.”

I’m very curious, because I’m with the bidders who thought of Readitlater as more of a feature rather than a product. Really, it does everything I need it to do. Where would they go from here? Social? No thanks, I don’t want other people’s bookmarks, and I also don’t want to have to download a native app. I read content using a browser, so concentrate on that space. I mean, God knows their website for users is Spartan, but do they really need $2.5 mill to spruce it up? Or am I just naive about the costs involved in developing a better website? To me it feels they’ve already kind of solved the problem. Now they have to form better partnerships for integration.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 20:12:36 +0000

I have used, and liked, Read It Later, but for me I find Evernote an all around more valuable tool that does almost everything RIL does, plus a whole lot more. In a field where critical mass is key to long term viability I wonder where RIL will fit in.