Version 2.4 for iOS – Login Support, Tweet Attribution, and More

February 1st, 2011  •  By Nate

Version 2.4 of Read It Later for iOS has been approved and should be appearing in the app store shortly.

Login Support

One long-standing issue with Read It Later has been accessing content behind a subscription or login wall.  Many users are subscribers to sites like the Wall Street Journal, ESPN Insider, and Harpers.  However, it was a messy ordeal to provide RIL access to these users’ accounts.  Without a standardized way to access each site and without APIs, it was difficult to create a solution that wasn’t overly complicated or inconsistent to the user.  I held off on implementing this until I settled on an ideal solution.  This solution has finally materialized in 2.4.

The new solution is simple and elegant.  To manage your site accounts and subscriptions, open the new account manager in the options screen.  Then, simply select the sites you have accounts for, enter your account information and voilà, you’ll be able to access your content in Read It Later, even offline.  There are no limits to where/how you can save your content.  You can continue to save with the bookmarklet, extensions, and through third-party Twitter or news apps.

Tweet Attribution

Note this feature is in Read It Later Pro only

Links saved from Twitter will now display the original tweet that contained the link and give you the ability to retweet it directly.  This not only allows you to remember where/why you saved a link, but allows you to respond to and/or give credit to the original poster after reading!

This will work on new links saved after updating to 2.4.  For the tweet to be saved with your link, the Twitter client you used to save the link with needs to support this new feature.  Three Twitter apps already support this feature (Echofon, SimplyTweet, and Gravity) and more are on the way.  If you use another Twitter client and would like this feature, I recommend you suggest it the app’s developers. 

(Twitter Client Developers: see the new ‘ref_id’ parameter in the #add and #send APIs)

#Longreads

The #longreads Twitter hash tag is a fantastic way to discover the best longform content on the web.  The tag forms a feed of longform content posted by readers and publications that are recognizing the trend.  This feed is grazed over and curated by three great services that all support Read It Later:

Longform.org – Posts new and classic non-fiction articles, curated from across the web and separated into a number of categories.

LongReads.com – A curated feed of longform content, updated daily.

Byliner – A new discovery and discussion site for readers who enjoy longform articles and short form books that is launching at the end of the month.

Now, when sharing an article on Twitter that is 1500 words or more, Read It Later will suggest adding the #longreads hash tag to your post.  If you read a great longform article, I encourage you to share it with the rest of us by using the #longreads hash tag.

Bug Fixes

Version 2.4 also fixes a number of important issues in the previous release.

Fixed: Performance/Lag Issue – a bug in the Article View caused a major performance degradation after viewing a few articles.  This has been fixed for good.

Fixed: Digest Recategorization Issue - a bug in Digest caused some topics to appear empty after recategorizing an item.

Fixed: Evernote/Email Article View Encoding – articles in some non-english languages would appear incorrectly when sharing to Evernote or emailing the full Article View

Fixed: Incomplete Web Views After Update – Please see this page for a description of the issue.

Posted in News

Is Mobile Affecting When We Read?

January 12th, 2011  •  By Nate

Printed media used to allow us to read in the places we found most comfortable.  When you imagine yourself reading the newspaper it’s probably in your favorite chair, at the breakfast table, or at the cafe with an orange mocha frappuccino in your hand.

Unfortunately, as news and media moves online, it moves us away from these places and into our desk chairs.  Even worse, consuming content is no longer on our own schedule.  The flood of content disrupts us all day as if we have an maniacal paperboy throwing new editions on our doorstep every 15 seconds.

However, after studying Read It Later’s own data, it seems that this trend is being reversed.  I’ve found that as devices become more mobile, it’s not only changing where we read, but when.  Today, I’d like to show you some of the data behind this movement.

Today’s data source: 100 million articles saved by Read It Later users across all major web and mobile platforms.

Constant Bombardment

Before looking at when we read, we should look first at when we encounter new content:

This chart shows the number of articles saved to Read It Later each hour (adjusted for timezones).  As you would suspect, it is steady throughout the day as we are bombarded with content every waking hour.

So how are readers dealing with the deluge of information?

Time Shifted Reading

Readers are saving content for a better time.

People are busy.  It’s unrealistic that we are going to consume all of this content the exact moment we discover it.  So we leave dozens of tabs open, we email ourselves links, or we use Read It Later to hold on to the content until we are ready to consume it.

Let’s take a look at when different users get around to reading the content they save during the day:

Computer Users

This graph shows the number of articles read each hour by Read It Later users on their computer.

Compared to the times articles are saved, you can see that a significant amount of content was shifted towards the end of a user’s day (6PM – 9PM).  The graph is not as flat either.  Where the number of saves remains fairly constant between 8AM – 4PM, the number of reads grows more sharply until noon and then begins to fall off until after work.

Overall though, this graph isn’t a dramatic departure from the times we are saving content.  It seems that while on a computer, we are more susceptible to discovering additional content throughout the day.

iPhone Users

This is where it gets interesting.  You’ll note four major spikes when most of the reading on an iPhone is done:

  • 6am - Early morning, breakfast
  • 9am - The morning commute, start of the work day
  • 5pm – 6pm - End of the work day and the commute home
  • 8pm – 10pm – Couch time, prime time, bed time

In reality, this really is a graph of whitespace time. Whitespace is the time between A and B. It’s the time on the subway or bus. It’s the time standing in line. It’s a spare moment.

It is during these moments between tasks and locations that people reach for their phone. These are perfect times to knock an item or two off of your reading list.  By saving content for later, readers are able to consume content during the voids in their day without interrupting the day’s normal flow.

iPad Users

The graph of when users are reading on the iPad shows the biggest time for reading: personal prime time.

This is generally the most relaxing time of day.  After a long day, work is done, dinner is resting in your belly and there is nothing left to do but put your feet up and relax.  This time slot is the same one coveted by television.  When the majority of people are consuming content it seems perfectly natural that people would use this time to do their reading as well.

Not surprising, if you look back at the graphs for computer and iPhone reading, you’ll see spikes during this same time (8 – 10 PM) appear on all graphs.

How the iPad is Changing Online Reading

While many have speculated that the iPad is going to replace printed newspaper and magazines, it is already changing the way we read online content too.

The newspaper/magazine paradigm suits tablets extremely well.  They are portable while still being large enough to make reading enjoyable.

As I started by saying, the newspaper’s portability allowed us to read in the places we found comfortable.  More importantly, it let us read the day’s content on our own schedule.

The iPad is doing the same.

Look what happens if we rerun the number of articles read on a computer but only for users who own an iPad:

Aside from a quick lunch hour at their desk, iPad owners are no longer doing the majority of their reading on their computers.  They are saving it for their personal prime time, when they can relax comfortably, iPad in hand and burn through the content they found during the day.

What This Says About the Future of Reading Content Online

When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs.  They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer.  Instead they shift that content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption.

Initially, it appears that the devices users prefer for reading are mobile devices, most notably the iPad.  It’s the iPad leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desk chairs.

As better mobile experiences become more accessible to more readers, this movement will continue to grow.  Readers want to consume content in a comfortable place, on their own time and mobile devices are making it possible for readers to take control once more.

Posted in Trends

Introducing Read It Later Trends

January 12th, 2011  •  By Nate

Over the past 3 years, Read It Later has grown to be one of the world’s largest digital reading platforms.  Users have saved over 100 million articles and spent a combined 2.5 million hours reading last year in the iPhone and iPad apps alone.

This has created a pile of data.

As I explored this data in an effort to better understand how users were using RIL, I discovered a lot of really interesting insights into how the web, mobile and content spaces are changing.  Recent changes in these spaces are frequently dissected in the press, but often with little data. With access to such a tremendous dataset, I wanted to start providing that data and hopefully start answering the questions we all have.

After a lot of digging, typing and regret over closing my eyes through a few math classes, I’d like to introduce the new Trends series.  Today’s inaugural post is the one closest to Read It Later’s heart and attempts to answer the simple question: When are people reading?

You can follow along to future posts by subscribing or following @ReadItLater on Twitter.

If you have any questions you are dying to have answered or ideas for future posts, I’d love to hear from you: trends@getpocket.com

——-

A Quick Word on User Privacy

User privacy is incredibly important to me.  I want to make it very clear how user data is being used here (or more appropriately how it is NOT being used).  Trends only looks at generalized patterns regarding reading and never at any specific user’s data.  No individual user or reading list is viewed to compile these posts.  No specific user will ever be highlighted in one of these posts.  If you have any concerns about privacy, please read RIL’s privacy policy and do not hesitate to contact me.

Posted in Trends

Import Instapaper into Read It Later

January 5th, 2011  •  By Nate

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for this one, so I thought I’d throw something together. If you have any leftover articles hanging around in Instapaper, you can now import them into Read it Later.

Try it out: Instapaper to Read It Later Importer

This importer should be considered beta.  I didn’t have a large Instapaper account to test with ;)   If you have any issues, just give me a shout.  Enjoy!

Posted in News

Read it Later for Firefox 2.1.1

December 27th, 2010  •  By Nate

Version 2.1.1 is out now.  You can grab the latest at Mozilla add-ons: Download

What Changed

  • Support for Firefox 4.0 Beta
  • Replaced text view with new Article View (text only, images are coming in the 3.0 update)
  • Replaced threading with web workers
  • Drag-drop support in Panorama (FFb5 – FFb7 required)
  • Faster start-up speed

Feedback

Please report any problems that you run into at Read It Later Support.

Posted in News

A Quick Word on the MobileRSS Update

December 22nd, 2010  •  By Nate

Update: After speaking with a number of other developers, including Silvio from Reeder, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is re-enable MobileRSS’s API key.  The developers who made MobileRSS have a number of other apps with Read it Later support (on Twitter, iPhone and iPad).  I’ve discovered that all of these apps use the same API key so disabling it unfairly affects an enormous number of innocent Read It Later users using the developer‘s other apps.

Ultimately the decision of what app to use/support should be up to the user.  While I may have strong opinions when it comes to defending follow developers, I will leave the decision about what apps to use up to you, the user. It seems that this issue has gotten enough attention that I hope users will have enough information to make their own decision.

Thank you all for your support and feedback.

(Now get off the internet and go drink some Eggnog.)

—

A recent update to the popular MobileRSS application was inappropriate.  It appeared to be an almost identical one-to-one clone of another application: Reeder.

Source: http://reederapp.com/ripoff
Story: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/12/22/when-is-design-inspiration-just-outright-theft/

Inspiration and imitation are a natural part of competition, especially in a market as tight as news readers.  But in this case, I personally felt that MobileRSS went too far.  As a solo developer, I rely on app sales to support myself.  A lot of other iOS developers do the same, including Reeder.  We simply don’t do things like this to each other.

As a result, I have decided to disable MobileRSS’s API key for the time being.  This is not an app that I would like ReadItLater to be a part of in its current form.

This is a tough decision because MobileRSS was the 3rd highest news app used by Read It Later users over the last year.  Understandably, a lot of you are going to lose functionality that you may have paid for.  I do not want to throw all of you under the bus as a result of this decision.

If you have bought MobileRSS and were using it as your main news reader, please drop me a line at support@getpocket.com and I will do my best to find a way to offset the cost for you.  (Please include your username)

Posted in News

72 New Apps Added to the App Directory

December 20th, 2010  •  By Nate

I just updated the Read It Later App Directory to include 72 more applications that have Read It Later support.

The Read It Later platform is now host to over 2300 user created applications and mashups that span across every major platform.  These include a lot of one-off personal mashups, projects under development, open source projects, userscripts, and more.

More than 130 applications have been publicly released and are now listed in the App Directory.

Here are some of the 70+ new additions:

iPhone Apps

News/Content

Twitter

Browsers

Bookmarks/Sharing

iPad Apps

News/Content

Twitter

Browsers

Android Apps

Blackberry Apps

Windows Phone 7 Apps

Chrome Extensions

Desktop Apps

Web Based Apps

More

Posted in News

How to Import Your Delicious Bookmarks

December 16th, 2010  •  By Nate

In the wake of rumors that Delicious is being shutdown, some users may be interested in importing their Delicious bookmarks into Read It Later.

You can use the import tool here:

Import Delicious Bookmarks into Read it Later

Posted in News

Turn your reading list into a beautiful PDF with Joliprint

December 15th, 2010  •  By Nate

Joliprint, a service that lets you create PDFs from web content, just added special support for Read It Later users.

Their conversion outputs a nicely formatted PDF, complete with images, that looks great on paper or in an ebook reader with PDF support.

You can get the Joliprint Read It Later bookmarklet and learn more here:

Joliprint – Convert a Read It Later List to PDF

Posted in News

Read It Later for Firefox 2.1 Beta

December 14th, 2010  •  By Nate

If you are using the Read It Later Firefox extension, I’d love your help in testing an upcoming version of the add-on.

In preparing for the upcoming Firefox 4 release, I had to make a number of big changes to the extension’s backend.  From the user perspective, nothing new should have changed. This is what I’d like help testing.

Even if you are not using the Firefox 4 betas (and are still on 3.5 or 3.6), I could still use your help.  Just install the beta (linked below) and make sure that no functionality has broken or degraded.

Thanks!

How to Install

  1. Download: Read It Later for Firefox 2.1.0b7
  2. From the Firefox menu: File -> Open File
  3. Select the downloaded file (from step 1)
  4. Follow instructions to install

What Changed

  • Support for Firefox 4.0 Beta
  • Replaced text view with new Article View (text only, images are coming in the 3.0 update)
  • Replaced threading with web workers
  • Drag-drop support in Panorama (FFb5 – FFb7 required)
  • Faster start-up speed

Feedback

Please report any problems that you run into at Read It Later Support.  Be sure to say you are using the beta.

Posted in News

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