

Leaving Instapaper for Readability - agperson
http://agblog.com/entry/3932

======
_frog
Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad
revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an
article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's
model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The
Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his
generates nearly no income from Readability's service, especially now that the
service has gone free with optional payments.

Also, what happens to all those authors that don't opt in to receive payments
from Readability? Does readability just take money on their behalf and not
actually pay it out to them? It seems like that would be a legal grey area.

[1]: <http://brooksreview.net/2012/03/readability-ios/>

~~~
dmazin
I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper
itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them. I think I recall
Marco talking about the fact that this is on purpose for the previously stated
concerns. Also, Instapaper doesn't let you stitch articles broken up into
multiple pages.

~~~
_frog
Actually multi-page stitching just got added to the browser bookmarklet,
relevant blog post: <http://blog.instapaper.com/post/18556429689>

~~~
iamclovin
Marco previously felt uncomfortable implementing this feature
(<http://www.marco.org/2011/07/19/siracusa-multipage>), so I wonder what
prompted the change in policy.

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duck
I left Instapaper for Readability as well, but my reason was entirely
different and a first for me (at least on the web): Marco. I'm not even sure
what it is about him exactly, but after listening to some of his Build and
Analyze podcasts and reading his slanted blog posts I just found myself not
wanting to use or support Instapaper anymore.

~~~
veidr
I can certainly imagine that making you want to stop listening to his podcast
and stop reading his blog, but it is surprising that it would be _the_ reason
you switched to a competing software product. Are Instapaper and Readability
otherwise so similar that the merits of the apps themselves didn't tip the
balance?

~~~
AlisdairO
I think it's quite a good reason - for example, I try to avoid flying Ryanair
because I find the guy who runs it objectionable. If I don't like the person
providing the product, putting money in their pocket feels wrong.

~~~
Protonk
Sure but the biggest claim I could make from listening to BnA is that marco is
kind of a dick. I'm sure that a good 30% of the software I used is written by
someone who is kind of a dick. He's not Pol Pot.

------
Steveism
As far as aesthetics go I actually prefer the approach Marco takes with
Instapaper. I think Readability does have more of a polished feel but in no
way does this polish make the service any more usable. The Instapaper apps are
top notch in my book.

The moral angle of feeling guilty and thus using Readabilty to compensate
authors is total garbage. I disagree with this guilt trip blog post on so many
levels. The 30% cut that Readability takes is the whole reason Readability
exists. Essentially the writers are providing free content to Readability that
they get to make a nice profit on. This is exploiting the writers to a far
greater degree than Instapaper. Also, not every article I save I deem worthy
of a contribution to the author. I may utterly hate an author's guts and am
simply reading their article to better understand their insane philosophies
before I decide I despise them. I'll fall back on an old Techdirt term:
CwF+RtB. If I like a writer and want to support them I'll visit their site
enough to earn them ad impressions, or I'll buy their book, or I purchase
something using their affiliate link. I certainly don't need Readability
paying people for me while pocketing a handsome chunk of change in the
process.

------
rdl
I really like Instapaper. I only really use it within the iOS ecosystem, and
only by adding articles directly from the instapaper site, or from longreads
or longform. I use an ad blocker anyway, so the sites aren't losing out on
marginal ad revenue from me.

Maybe Readability or Read It Later are better, but instapaper is the first one
I found, and I'm happy with it, and have a queue of about 500 nice articles
built up, so I'm not likely to switch unless I see a better reason than "Marco
is a bit presumptuous in podcasts" and "a competing site integrates a tipjar."

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athst
I think Readability's model is a little presumptuous. Why do they get to
decide unilaterally that they deserve 30% of the revenue? It's not like the
App Store where you agreed to it. Given all the work that goes into creating
an article, is extracting the text worth 30%? If I was a publisher, I wouldn't
think so.

To me, Instapaper's approach is much more straightforward. You have to have
gone to the publisher's site in the first place and seen all of the ads. You
pay a flat fee for the Instapaper app, and can subscribe if you like the
service. Why make it more complicated than it has to be?

~~~
ryanwatkins
Yes, Instapapers model is more straight forward, but you do not have to go to
the publishers site and seen the ads, to add the article.

Instapaper provides and API to add links without visiting the site that is
used by a number of other applications.

And I've written an app (<http://www.ryanwatkins.net/software/papermache> \-
webOS and Android Instapaper app) that allows you to browser a feed of
articles and add them to Instapaper directly.

------
motoford
Do you feel guilty when you skip commercials on your TiVo? I don't, sorry.

An ad on a page is no different than a billboard or some other passive
advertising. I am not required to notice it.

~~~
bigiain
[http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising-
quote...](http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising-quote/) *

"You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe
them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put
themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even
start asking for theirs." -- Banksy

* Just one of _many_ hits on google reproducing it, I'm not endorsing that blog in particular…

------
tdtran
I used Instapaper for quite a while, even wrote a small Android utility app to
quickly bookmark a link to my Instapaper account and read it later on a bigger
screen. But it was a long time ago.

I use Read It Later these days. Simply because it's a better product than
Instapaper. It runs on all devices I own and use daily: iPhone, Android phone
and tablet, MacBook, Linux laptop, Linux workstation. I bought Instapaper app
and still have it on my iPhone mostly to check if its latest update has
anything great which I miss in RIL. Nothing.

PS Marco's personality certainly "helped" me switch. But it's minor.

------
ruswick
As we all already know, Readability has been running what could be considered
a scam by pocketing some of that money simply because the authors don't know
about it.

And, I really don't see why I would have a moral obligation to pay for every
single article I read. Not every article is worth paying for. 90% of the stuff
I read is trash. Plus, a lot of blogs offer their own ways to donate. If a
writer is good, they'll get my money anyway. I'm not handing out cash to
everyone, and I'm definitely not giving it to Readability.

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quinndupont
Ever wonder if any publishers have actually collected any of your
contribution? There's NO accountability about how much money actually makes it
to publishers; since Readability does not seek the publishers, each publisher
must be aware of their money, and go collect it from Readability, and if they
do not, eventually it becomes Readability's. It's a great model, and the
ethics are wonderful, but it suffers from this fatal flaw.

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OpieCunningham
Following this train of thought simply leads to a further moral dilemma. If
the concern is that Instapaper is bad because it bypasses the content
providers income methodology then Readability is also bad because it does the
exact same thing. The only difference is that Readability has created their
own income methodology, of which a portion they feed back to the content
providers (sometimes). At no point does either service require a content
provider opt-in before the service's users are able to pull content from the
providers.

I believe Instapaper has an opt-out function for content providers whereby
Instapaper users are prevented from adding that content providers content to
their Instapaper account. Does Readability have that opt-out capability as
well? If not, Readability could very well be considered worse than Instapaper
on a moral scale since Readability then becomes a form of blackmail: agree to
accept payment for your content that we decide is just, otherwise we'll simply
eliminate your existing payment method anyway.

I fail to see how any moral analysis of either service could conclude one is
good and the other bad. They are both bad from the perspective of the average
content provider. Half measures, and possibly blackmail, do not assuage the
moral concern.

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rmm
I left because I felt readability has a lot more features I like. The ability
to hit ` on any webpage is awesome. I am also a click away from saving the
article.

The latest iteration of Instapaper looks nicer in some ways, (looks like
Reeder was an inspiration), but is painfully annoying in others. i.e I now
have to touch twice to delete an article. Instapaper needs a stripped down
Lite version that all it does is show articles and then let you delete them.

My 2c.

~~~
masklinn
> The ability to hit ` on any webpage is awesome.

What does that do?

> I am also a click away from saving the article.

So're you in Instapaper? Depending on the browser you're using anyway, I
guess. There's an official bookmarklet (1-click in browsers which still have
bookmarks bars) and there is probably a chrome/button extension for your
browser (I see a dozen or two on the Chrome extensions site)

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donniezazen
I do not like to use ad-blockers but ads have made internet really impossible
to use. Some sites have few layer of ads before you can actually access the
content. I feel content providers don't respect their customer by putting
hundreds of ads on their website. You do not always appreciate intrusive ads
like music or video or resource intensive flash. If content providers can be
considerate of the number of ads they put on their website, I will not have to
use ad-blocker at all.

Read-It-Later is the only solution on Android, so, I go with it.

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codex
Only one feature keeps me with Instapaper: Readability's crappy bookmarklet
implementation. On my iPhone, I can save a page to Instapaper with a click of
the bookmark. Readability, however, will throw up a prompt page asking me to
confirm that I really want to save the page. The extra latency turns out to be
really annoying in practice. If you're going to prompt, at least do it client
side.

~~~
zoul
I have installed the bookmark recently and on the iPhone it does not ask for
confirmation. Maybe they have changed the code?

------
mmahemoff
Revenue distribution is an interesting variation of Flattr.com's business
model.

Flattr is more general as it's a platform for distributing micro-donations to
creators of music, games, etc., whereas Readability is specifically about
publishing and effectively offers a product/service directly to micro-
donators. You could see the same model being applied to other verticals.

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hasantayyar
Instapaper has a great api and yes it is not usable as readability. But I can
still use instapaper on any platform.

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ntoshev
Like Instapaper, Readability doesn't have an android app, so any other
advantage it may have is meaningless for me.

~~~
CarlHoerberg
Instapaper has several (not offical, but good non the less) android clients:

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.codecarpet.reading...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.codecarpet.readingo.dev&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5jb2RlY2FycGV0LnJlYWRpbmdvLmRldiJd)
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.homelinux.hilo.eve...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.homelinux.hilo.everpaper&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5ob21lbGludXguaGlsby5ldmVycGFwZXIiXQ.).

there's only one readability client, which is not that good....

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fahimk.readability...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fahimk.readabilityclient&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5mYWhpbWsucmVhZGFiaWxpdHljbGllbnQiXQ.).

~~~
badboy
I use InstaFetch on my Android phone:
<https://market.android.com/details?id=pl.immortal.instafetch>

Even the Lite Version has everything I need: Saving links and from time to
time even read them on my phone (now that I've got a Kindle that's not so
often anymore)

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nuttendorfer
I've left Instapaper and Readability for e-mail/desktop shortcuts and
Readable.

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Kiro
Read It Later beats both.

