Digg, the Web 2.0-era link aggregator that’s now being given a second chance at life, is open to buying Mozilla’s read-it-later app, Pocket.
On Thursday, Mozilla announced it would shut down Pocket on July 8, saying that the way people use the web has evolved, and it needed to focus on new areas of development. Shortly after, Kevin Rose, Digg’s original owner, now co-founder of the new Digg alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, posted on X that his company would be interested in acquiring Pocket from Mozilla.
Tagging both Mozilla and Pocket on the post, Rose wrote, “we love Pocket at @Digg, happy to take it over and continue to support your users for years to come!” The post additionally tagged Betaworks founding partner Peter Rojas, previously the founder of Gizmodo and Engadget, now SVP New Products at Mozilla.
Neither Digg nor Mozilla has yet to respond to a request for comment on the news. However, the deal could be interesting if it went through, as Digg could leverage Pocket’s existing user base to fuel interest in its relaunch. Digg could potentially even integrate Pocket’s reading list with Digg, making it easier for users to find and share engaging content directly to the news aggregator. This could provide an initial pipeline for feeding news and articles into Digg while it worked to grow its user base.
Digg’s comeback has attracted attention, as it pairs Digg’s original founder, Rose, with Ohanian, who helped create the longtime Digg competitor, Reddit, now an internet giant of its own. Digg recently announced it has also brought on Christian Selig, the founder of the third-party Reddit app Apollo, as an adviser. Selig’s Apollo app had been one of the best ways to interact with Reddit, but the company cut off the app’s access by raising its API pricing to the point that it would have put Selig out of business.
Digg isn’t the only one to have gone after Pocket. Medium CEO Tony Stubbleine says he also explored buying Pocket in 2023, but never heard from Mozilla before it announced it was shutting the app down.
“Not sure what Mozilla is doing, but it is kind of infuriating,” Stubbleine told TechCrunch. “The Pocket software is easy to rebuild, but some of the infrastructure and integrations around the web would be hard to replace. So I’m sure that someone would have taken it on.”
Updated after publication with comment from Stubbleine.
