Pocket, the read-it/watch-it/consume-it-later service formerly known as Read It Later, on Tuesday launched Pocket for Publishers, which aims to shed some light on that question. The free tool gives publishers a better idea of the lifespan of a story, by telling them the percentage of readers that are actually coming back to read content they’ve saved, and how long it takes them to return. Pocket is launching the tool with a handful of publishers, including GigaOM and paidContent.

Pocket for Publishers has two parts. On the front end, publishers can install a “Save to Pocket” button on their websites, can integrate the technology into their apps, and can add a custom message to the footer of any article or video saved from their site to help promote special content, their apps, their social media accounts, or other things.

On the back end, participating publishers access a dashboard that includes “includes top content and authors based on saves, opens and open rate, and new metrics that focus on longevity and engagement.” At left, you can see a sample of what that looks like, for Om Malik’s recent story “Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects.“

Launch partners (besides us) include The Verge, Buzzfeed, Longreads, USA Today, WordPress and The Next Web. Other publishers can sign up to request access.

Late last year, Pocket also rolled out subscription options for publishers that charge for content. Among the publishers already using this service are the Virginia Quarterly Review, the New York Review of Books and longform journalism site Matter. The subscription options aren’t automatically included in the new Pocket for Publishers, but users can request them.

Pocket has over 8.5 million users across the web, Mac, iOS and Android, and is also integrated into services like Flipboard and Zite. The company says that users saved content to Pocket 240 million times in 2012.

Pocket competitors include Instapaper, a paid app with about 2 million users, and Readability. (Readability offered a payment-sharing program for publishers, but ended it last year.) Amazon, too, hopes to compete in the space with a new “Send to Kindle” button for publishers.

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In this business, you can’t count on anything having longevity. To avoid new services that are likely to get shut down within a few years, you’d have to avoid every new tech product. Products and services lasting more than a few years are the exception, not the rule.

Fair enough! Except I didn’t say that.

This is what I said: It is hard to trust Google anymore to make rational and consumer centric decisions. I said — nuanced as it might be — that I don’t trust Google to introduce new apps and keep them around, because despite what the company says, these apps are not their main business. Their main business is advertising and search — regardless of whatever nonsense you might read. They will sacrifice anything and everything to keep those businesses intact. Sure, they embraced mobile advertising and mobile search, but that’s just the same business on a different device.

I am far more likely to believe in and use products that are the main focus of the company behind them. Online storage? Dropbox. Time-shifting web content? Pocket or Instapaper. Short form communication? Twitter. Baby pictures and wedding photos to make single people miserable (or happy for being single)? Facebook.

The point is that a company whose main focus is a specific service or a singular product, like Evernote, is far more likely to focus its energies to build a business around it and keep it around. And if in seven years (or seven months) they fail — hell, at least they went down trying.

Our company pays thousands of dollars for Google Apps and the reason we do is because it is a business for Google and it makes good business sense. I have no problem paying for Instapaper or Pocket or Dropbox or Skype or anything that helps me do my job. And if anything that starts out free (Dropbox did) and then wants me to pay for it (like Evernote), I don’t hesitate upgrading. Why? Because I want these guys to be around.

As the Google Reader example shows (and as Chris Wetherell told me in an interview), Google didn’t even try with Reader. It never gave us an option to pay, even though Google is willing to offer some paid services when it makes sense, like multiseat licenses for Google Apps.

As Marco said, in the end it’s always business. It’s just not Google’s business, so perhaps that is why we should shift our energies and attention to services whose business is the apps they want us to use.

That said, I don’t think Marco is that far off from my way of thinking. He wrote, “Investing too heavily in someone else’s proprietary system for too long rarely ends gracefully, but when it bites us, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.”

Isn’t that what I am saying? Albeit, with a lot more emotion?

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Amazon presents “Send to Kindle” as an alternative to read-it-later services like Pocket and Instapaper:

“The Send to Kindle Button lets you easily send that content to your Kindle to read later, at your convenience. Just send once and read everywhere on any of your Kindle devices or free Kindle reading apps for iPhone, iPad and Android phones or tablets. No more hunting around for that website or blog that caught your eye — just open your Kindle and all the content you sent is right there. The Send to Kindle Button is also great for those who want to collect content from the web to use in work projects, school assignments, or hobbies.”

The new feature for websites is the most recent in a line of read-it-later services Amazon has launched. Last year, the company announced a “Send to Kindle” button for Google Chrome, and later added support for Firefox. And users can already email files to their Kindles or transmit them using desktop apps. But the browser extensions — and now the web app for publishers — are Amazon’s effort to make the Kindle and Kindle apps an easy way to read all types of content, not just ebooks.

Developers who want to add the button can do so here, and the WordPress plugin is here.

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“Obama’s Way” by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair came first followed by “The Busy Trap” in the New York Times and a series of techy-articles on topics like hacking and Apple. On the video front, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” — of course — led the way followed by an eclectic mix of clips about investing, body language and activism. You can see both top ten lists here.

While view-it-later services are undeniably popular, Pocket’s report raises two questions. First, how many people actually read that Michael Lewis article later rather than read-it-never? In my case, I put several items a week into my Instapaper folder but rarely get around to retrieving them (unless they’re for research). Pocket offers a graphic that suggests many people do in fact open the stuff they store but the chart doesn’t take account of multiple opens by the same person:

The other question about Pocket’s findings turns on the tech-heavy subjects of the top 10-list. While pieces like “The inside story of the death of Palm and webOS” (#6, Chris Ziegler of The Verge) are popular among techies, such fare is too esoteric for most folks. My family and friends don’t read articles like that but prefer instead more universal subjects like food, travel, philosophy or sports. Does this mean Pocket’s growth will be mostly limited to computer types?

Probably not. These type of services are so useful that they are likely to enjoy widespread adoption soon. Meanwhile, publishers like BuzzFeed are making them even easier to use by adding “read it later” buttons right on their stories:

Finally, the popularity of “view-it-later” tools will continue to grow as products like Amazon’s Kindle add buttons of their own. For an easy-to-read overview of to use these Pocket and similar products, see my colleague Laura Owen’s helpful explanation here.

(Image by CREATISTA via Shutterstock)

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What helps extend Chrome OS is support for web extensions. Here are a few of the more useful ones I turn to on a regular basis. The best part: All of these work with the Chrome browser too, so you don’t need a Chromebook to use use then. While many extensions are simply shortcuts to web sites or apps, these have become my go-to extensions:

Clearly by Evernote (install). I’ve long used Evernote’s cloud service to store ideas, images and general information. It’s no surprise to me that the company recently picked up $85 million in funding for enterprise workers to do the same. With the Clearly extension, it’s easy to clip items from the web and have them available on every other device I own. But that’s not what I use it for. Instead, with one button tap, the web extension clears all the clutter from any web page and presents it in an easy-to-read format, much like the Reader function does in Apple’s Safari browser. Evernote Premium subscribers can even use Clearly to read web content aloud in one of 21 languages.

Pocket (install). This web-clipping service certainly overlaps with Evernote, but I simply like the presentation of web pages better, especially on my mobile devices. The former Read It Later service became Pocket and with its cross-platform support, I generally use it on my Chromebook to send pages to the cloud for later reading on my iPad mini or Galaxy Note 2 smartphone. It’s simple to use too: Just tap the extension button when viewing any web page and you’re done. Once the page is sent to your Pocket account, you can add tags for aiding in content organization.

Save to Google Drive (install). This one is relatively new, having just been added by Google recently. But boy is it useful for a Chromebook user; especially someone who recently joined the Chromebook team and got 100 GB of Google Drive storage included with their laptop purchase. This extension that adds a button to save web page links, documents and even media files appears in a right-click context menu, making it easy to save local storage space on your Chromebook.

Any.DO (install). I previously reviewed the Any.DO task management app and since it’s effective and works on all of my devices, I still use it. The Any.DO web extension brings my tasks to the Chromebook, allowing me to see what I need to be working on next. The extension syncs tasks and reminders to my other devices so I don’t have to manage tasks differently depending on what phone or tablet I happen to be using when away from the Chromebook.

Send using Gmail (install). Google has its own official extension that I was using to send links over email, but I replaced it with this instead for one simple reason: I wanted to save space on the Chromebook. Instead of having yet another web extension button, this handy bit of code adds an option to “Email this page address” without a button. To access it, just use a two-finger tap on your Chromebook trackpad when viewing a web page and you’ll see the option in a pop-up menu. Choose it, add your recipients and hit send. Note that this extension places occasional ads on your web pages, but you can disable them in the settings.

Awesome Screenshot: Capture and Annotate (install). The Chrome OS has built-in screen capture and image editing features but I find this extension to better fit my workflow. It also provides more options: You can capture a selected area of the screen, for example. And it’s simple to mark up an image or annotate it prior to saving. The only issue I have with this extension is that you manually have to right-click to save your captured image. There is a native option to save an image locally, but it doesn’t seem to work on the Chrome OS.

Of course, these extensions help me focus on what I use my Chromebook for: Mostly web browsing and blogging at work. (OK, I admit I have the Facebook extension installed too.) But the Chrome extension site likely has something for everyone these days. And although many people consider living in a browser too limiting an environment — for some it surely is — these extensions can help turn Chrome OS into more than just a browser.

Got any favorite extensions for Chromebooks or the Chrome browser? Drop them in the comments and I’ll take a look!

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I tested the new Listen functionality in Pocket and it works quite well. On my Galaxy Nexus phone with Android 4.1, there was no configuration involved, nor any speech engines needed to install. I simply updated Pocket, went to a recently saved article in the app and hit the Listen button in the app menu. You can pause the reading and control the speed through a Fast/Slow toggle bar.

One of the main reasons I use Pocket as my web clipping platforms is the widespread support across many devices: I can save articles from any browser and read them on practically any device, including those running iOS. Unfortunately, the Pocket team has no immediate plans to bring the Listen feature to iOS because “iOS doesn’t currently provide a text-to-speech API.”

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Longreads offers membership for $3 per month or $30 per year and until now the only perk has been the good feeling that comes from supporting the site. In addition to exclusive content, members will “have the chance to recommend future Longreads Member exclusives. Tell us what you want to share with your fellow members (it can be a story, an excerpt, or something completely different), and if we like it too, we’ll find it and feature both you and your pick.”

“Our paid membership is still relatively small compared to the size of our overall community,” Longreads founder Mark Armstrong — who is also the editorial director of read-it-later service Pocket — told me, “but it’s grown enough over the past year that we wanted to start sending more perks to our members as a thank-you.”

The first exclusive is chapter six from Charles Duhigg’s bestselling book The Power of Habit. Longreads is licensing the chapter from Duhigg’s publisher, Random House, and will license future exclusives as well.

Other websites are also experimenting with content perks for paying members. My colleague Mathew Ingram recently wrote about tech commentary site Techdirt, which gives paying readers early access to blog posts, as well as other membership benefits.

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You can download the extension from the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, it sends “news articles, blog posts and other web content” to Kindle, removing advertising and other distractions. You can also preview text before you send it or send only selected text on a page.

I tested “Send to Kindle” versus Pocket on my Kindle Touch and iPad. I sent this Pinterest iPad app article by my colleague Eliza Kern and this YouTube video about a cat and a tortoise to both.

Send to Kindle on iPad

Send to Kindle

On Kindle Touch: The Pinterest article arrived on Kindle Touch within a minute. The formatting looks good, with pictures obviously rendered in black-and-white. Links are intact and work in Kindle Touch’s experimental web browser.

The video does not work on Kindle Touch. It pulls all the text and still photos from the YouTube page.

On Kindle for iPad: Pictures in an article render in color and break up the flow of the text. (See screenshot, right.) This is also a problem in Pocket, but the design’s a little better.

Pocket on iPad

Pocket

On Kindle Touch: The process for getting Pocket articles onto a Kindle e-reader is not super-easy. You have to download your reading list into free ebook management tool Calibre. Then you can send the file wirelessly to Kindle using Amazon’s Send to Kindle desktop version or email it to your Kindle email address.

Once you’ve done this, though, the reading process is great: Calibre compiles all of the articles into a magazine-like format that is easy to read on your Kindle. (If you use Instapaper, the process is easier — learn how to do it here.) So you can keep all of your articles in one “magazine” instead individually downloading them and storing them as separate files on your Kindle, the way you do with Send to Kindle.

Pocket supports the saving of videos, but you won’t be able to watch them on a Kindle Touch.

On Pocket for iPad: Easy and looks great when you have the Pocket iPad app installed. You can save all kinds of content, not just text. So I can watch my cat and tortoise video just fine.

Which one should you use?

The Send to Kindle Chrome browser extension is a good way to send text and articles to your Kindle e-reader quickly. If you want to get a single long article onto your Kindle, I’d go with the Chrome extension. But if you want to read many articles together in a magazine-like format, I really like Pocket, and I wish Kindle would  let you send a whole reading list, not just a single article.

If you primarily use Kindle for iPad, you shouldn’t use the Send to Kindle extension. Use a read-it-later service like Pocket or Instapaper instead. They render text and graphics better, and Pocket lets you save video, not just text.

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The funding round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Baseline Ventures and Google Ventures.

Read It Later relaunched as Pocket in April and made its app completely free. The company says it has nearly six million users, up from about 4.5 million in April, saving a million pieces of content a day. It is integrated into over 350 third-party apps, including Flipboard and Twitter. Thirty percent of the content saved to Pocket is saved from news and reader apps.

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Spool was started in late 2010 and launched an app that essentially allowed you to take web content and access it through an iPhone app. So far, if you are thinking it doesn’t seem any thing special, you are going to be right.  At the app level, it was no different than, say, Instapaper or Pocket, two other immensely popular apps that can be used to read web content offline.

The app, however hides a technology that is immensely useful for Facebook. Spool had built its own media-distribution network using servers and caching media content in various data centers. Web content you saved can be parsed, cached, queued up and made available for quick access on the apps or on the web. The approach to cache and share content extended beyond just web page content. It also allowed you to watch videos or other media inside the Spool app as well – spooled for instant view or offline viewing later.

Facebook was attracted to this media content sharing technology and in all likelihood will make it a part of its infrastructure for its web and mobile apps. Facebook has struggled with its mobile apps that continue to suffer from performance issues. The company is working hard to launch iOS optimized apps, but it would need to overcome many hurdles to provide a seamless experience.

By the way, this technology was attractive enough for many suitors – Dropbox, Google and Twitter among them. In the end, Facebook offered the most amount of cash – though not that much – for the company. Like Facebook, Twitter’s experience depends on having powerful infrastructure, both at the data center and network level. If Twitter can provide a better mobile experience over spotty mobile networks, it only helps its own cause. Too bad, Twitter made a low-ball offer for a talented team and the technology.

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