Some answers from the Business Development team! (Thanks to Kunal, Denelle and Susan)
Keep the questions and thoughts coming…
Pocket will continue to pursue a freemium business model that includes content sponsored by publishers alongside premium subscription services.
We do see a distinction between sponsored content and traditional advertising – the former is much more focused on delivering value to the user along with generating revenue.
It’s hard to make any definite commitments for the future, but there are no current plans or considerations for bringing sponsored content or traditional advertising into Firefox or new Firefox mobile experiences.
Pocket has its own active community of users and a team of employees focused on supporting this user community. This is likely to continue a pretty distinct community within the big Mozilla tent, just as the Rust or WebVR communities are quite distinct from one another.
We haven’t begun exploring the opportunities for connecting our core communities or active contributors to Pocket. Thanks for raising this: We’ll be sure to include it as a topic of conversation with the Pocket team in the months ahead. If you have ideas this would be much appreciated.