Save For Later Service Pocket Overhauls Its API To Make Things Easier For Its 10,000 Developer Partners

Pocket, the online service for saving content for later viewing that began life as Read It Later, today announced a brand new version of its API, designed to make things easier and better for its developer partners, which drive a significant portion of its total activity. Forty-five percent of Pocket’s saves come from third-party sources, the company says.

And while Pocket had discussed being on track to hit the 1 million saves per day mark in summer this year, now the company is revealing that it actually exceeds that milestone on a daily basis. In fact, Pocket claims that it’s now among the top-used sharing services in certain apps, including Zite, contending with heavyweights like Twitter and Facebook.

The revamped API introduces OAuth 2, letting users activate pocket in third party apps quicker and reducing friction around saving even further, as well as an Objective-C SDK for easy iOS and Mac development. There’s also the inclusion of Pocket’s recent feature additions, including favorites, filters for narrowing to specific content, better tagging and searching by domain.

Pocket’s API is clearly crucial to its overall strategy, accounting for nearly half of its engagement. And the easier it is for developers to implement Pocket integration, the more likely they will, thereby extending that existing reach. The company also set up a brand new developer site with this release, providing more centralized and organized support for interested third parties.

With refocused attention on the API, the startup may be working on a precursor to revenue generation through this channel, since after switching over from its paid app model with Read It Later, it remains unclear how it plans to monetize. Founder Nate Weiner explained why Pocket opted to become a free service despite being profitable as Read It Later in an earlier blog post, but remained mum on future revenue plans. The company did raise a $5 million Series B in July, however, to help fuel platform and device expansion.