
The next generation of Instapaper - paulbz
http://www.marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation
======
rkudeshi
I wonder how much this has to do with the rise of Pocket over the last year.

It's no secret that Pocket has improved dramatically since rebranding a year
ago. And I'm sure most people who are looking for their first "read-later" app
are trying Pocket (free) before buying Instapaper ($5).

Personally speaking, I bought Instapaper for myself and gifted it to a few
other people over the years, but I switched to Pocket a few months ago. The
continuous updates and simpler interface (those thumbnail pics are
surprisingly useful) won me over, despite my hesitations about their business
model.

~~~
elithrar
Instapaper is nice because I felt like I was paying a reasonable amount for an
app that I use regularly.

Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing
costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning
their longevity.

~~~
mtgx
I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app
that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like
Google's Keep, a notes app.

Who cares if it dies in 2 years? You might be switching through 3 other
alternatives by then anyway. And you can still save your week worth of data if
they announce the shut down anyway.

It's not like say an e-mail service, where you might actually want to keep
your years worth of data.

~~~
incision
>I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app
that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like
Google's Keep, a notes app.

I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.

~~~
mtgx
And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably
never check again.

Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never
will - except maybe that _one_ article you plan on reading when you're
travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it,
with all the news coming it.

~~~
incision
>And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably
never check again.

That's a pretty terrible analogy.

What I have in Pocket is more than a bunch of bookmarks, it's a local archive
of everything I've added. I can read it in a nice flowing text format and
benefit from limited search functionality. I can reference anything in there
anytime whether I have connectivity or not, whether the source page still
exists or not.

>Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never
will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're
travelling a few weeks from now.

Stop projecting your habits and use case onto everyone else.

~~~
kayoone
if you have unread items going back for more than a year, chances are you are
adding more to the list than you are removing. I guess hes right, i have
observed this in myself and many colleagues from the days of delicious
onwards. You bookmark/tag alot of interesting stuff because you are absolutely
sure you will need it again and then forgetting about it after several
weeks/months never looking at it again. In the case that you need that
knowledge again, you just dig it up on google (if you can remember it).

Might not be true for you, but i am sure its pretty common behaviour. I have
given up on read-later apps because stuff just kept piling up. Noawadays i
just leave the tabs open until i have read something of interest and if i
figure that it isnt interesting enough after a few days i just close the tab
and forget about it. That way i am managing my to-read list on a daily basis
and it doesnt go back later than a week. With chrome sync its also easy to
grab the open tabs on my other devices and read them there.

That being said things might be different if i had a long communte or had more
freetime after work, but in that case i am usually reading a book, if i am
reading anything at all. Giving the brain some relaxation time from the
constant bombardment of tech "news" is nice as well.

~~~
jvzr
I think OP's saying he has _read_ archives going back 1 year and a half. Not
unread, _read_.

I too have hundreds of read articles sitting in my Instapaper's archives, and
a few dozens of favorites. I'm more concerned for them than the unread
articles.

If Pocket goes away in the blink of an eye, what becomes of your archives &
favorites?

~~~
incision
_> If Pocket goes away in the blink of an eye, what becomes of your archives &
favorites?_

Seems like the type of thing to be proactive about it.

Pocket has an API that you could use to sync with another similar service , or
roll something of your own. They also have a simple export which provides a
list of source URLs for what you've pocketed.

I've set Kippt up to retrieve from Pocket and used to the manual export to
load things into historious [1].

As a last resort, on the Android version all the offline assets and pages can
be found here [2].

1: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5610492> 2:
com.ideashower.readitlater.pro/files/RIL_offline

------
barredo
Twitter can be dramatic
<https://twitter.com/SteveStreza/status/327550484745445376>

~~~
blairbeckwith
This is classic Marco, nothing to see here. He's just a child who starts this
stuff over nothing, from what I've seen.

~~~
wklauss
I would have done the same as Marco. It was unasked for and unnecessary.
Pocket is a great app but so its Instapaper and Marco has done a tremendous
job over the years by keeping it in shape by himself (with exception of the
Android app). This is a way on pissing all over the the efforts of a
independent developer. Just because.

~~~
smackfu
C'mon, that tweet from Steve is exactly the kind of thing Marco would post if
Pocket or any of his other competitors were getting bad press.

~~~
ruswick
In fact, this behavior is the very same reason people venerate Pinboard's
Twitter account.

~~~
tptacek
Yes, everything popular you don't like is because people just love assholes.

------
ambirex
When I compare this to the Parse/Facebook deal, this seems like a more natural
transition.

I actually doubt it has much to do with Pocket, instead I think is exactly how
Marco put it, grown bigger than a single person could manage.

Congrats to both Marco and Betaworks.

~~~
skeletonjelly
If it had grown bigger than one person could manage, why not hire somebody?

~~~
jkestner
He's stated before he likes the employee-free lifestyle. And there is a huge
gap to bridge between "I can do this myself" and "There's enough work to hire
a full-time employee".

~~~
manmal
But getting one or more partners on board who get like 10% of the revenue and
take over all the development work and day to day business might have worked
quite well. Or subcontracting to some kick-ass freelancers (who would have
jumped at that opportunity, surely?).

------
emehrkay
I enjoyed the podcast that Marco had on the 5by5 network because he seemed
like such a regular guy who happens to work hard and put out a popular
product. A lot of times it also motivated me to get to work on my own things.
Congrats to him and Im looking forward to what he does next

~~~
Shank
Unrelated to the article, but Marco & a couple others now run a different
podcast: <http://atp.fm/>

~~~
lostlogin
Has there been some sort of falling out between Arment, Siracusa and Gruber -
they all left 5by5 within a short time of the Gruber move, and in my opinion
their shows are now worse.

~~~
dpcx
Gruber left in February 2012 [1]. Hypercritical continued until December [2].
Build and Analyze the same [3].

Siracusa and Arment both said they thought the shows had run the course.
Siracusa is also a regular on The Incomparable [4].

[1]: <http://5by5.tv/talkshow> [2]: <http://5by5.tv/hypercritical> [3]:
<http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze> [4]: <http://5by5.tv/incomparable>

~~~
lostlogin
Nicely referenced. I just noted that Siracusa and Marco seemed to start shows
very soon after leaving and despite saying things about probably coming back
they haven't.

------
danleech
I switched from Instapaper to Readability about a year ago, despite Instapaper
being faster and having a better (actual) business model. I was lured by the
beautiful reading experience that comes with Readability’s iOS apps.

Hopefully, with a focussed team behind it, Instapaper will begin to catch up
on the design front. I’m looking forward to seeing where Betaworks take it.

------
lispython
In the article "Talent acquisitions" <http://www.marco.org/2012/07/20/talent-
acquisitions> Marco criticized Pulp, Wallet, Sparrow and he wrote:

 _Instapaper has had multiple similar inquiries from large companies over the
last few years. We’ve never gotten very far in talks because I don’t want
Instapaper to shut down, I don’t want to move my family across the country,
and they didn’t want to pay enough — for them, they’ll pay a premium to hire
me, but they won’t pay much for a service they’ll shut down immediately and an
app they’ll throw away._

 _I was only able to reject those offers because Instapaper is a healthy
business, and the life that Instapaper provides for me and my family is better
than what the big companies offered."_

 _If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what
you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive
to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company._

So it's not a "Talent acquisition", but how could we still keep the software
and services around that us enjoy in the future?

~~~
fakeer
I think the thought process is simple - you run a paid service and it's good,
liked by people and you see another service, free, being acquired(acquihired
most likely) and you feel bad about it(not jealousy necessarily) and you give
your opinion and how that's bad for app ecysystem and of course for the users
who depend on them. But when an opportunity comes to selling the app you just
sell it if the price is good and that's a known thing.

OF course in the blog post after sell you mention how you'll still be
influential and all.

Though not al sell/buys are bad. Evernote bought Skitch and now I like it
more.

------
Kylekramer
Arment two days ago:
<https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/326757551947530240>

He may be just refuting the "peak downloads/full time on Magazine" claim, but
kind of an odd response given this.

~~~
uxp
Actually, it doesn't sound odd in the slightest if you read the whole thread,
including the two people at the end complaining about the lack of support.
Reading the article, it sounds like Instapaper was just too big for Marco to
support on his own, and has partnered with BetaWorks to help him make the
product better, probably by giving it support.

It seems incredibly cut and dry from that perspective.

~~~
Kylekramer
Well, one of bottom guys is the editor of Arment's magazine, so only one of
them is asking for support. I just find it odd that people saying things
mostly proven by this sale (Instapaper isn't Arment's top priority, it is hard
to run Instapaper alone) gets a somewhat chastising response saying "it isn't
true at all".

------
nicholassmith
Good for Marco, good for Instapaper, good for Betaworks.

I believe Marco when he says he's not done it out of worry for the
competition. He's never seemed particularly bothered about having rivals, as
Instapaper was making money. It does seem that his passion for the project was
waning though, there's not been a new version for a while, compared to a few
years ago where new features were arriving on a reasonably regular basis.

I think it'll be a good fit, whilst Marco might be bored with the project he
wasn't going to give his crowning achievement up to anyone, so I imagine
Betaworks will be taking it onwards and upwards. Good for us as well, it means
Marco can find a new project to interest him.

------
Samuel_Michon
I’m saddened by this announcement. I’m an early Instapaper paying subscriber,
a The Magazine paying subscriber of the first hour, I’ve read every article on
his blog, I’ve listened to all the episodes of Build & Analyze, Accidental
Tech and the Neutral podcasts — I’ve spread the word every way I could and
engaged with the sponsors of the shows. I became a Tumblr member because of
him.

Marco has always talked about how important he felt it was to be independent
and to offer a paid service in order not to be acquired. Given how he handled
the Android release, I believed he would never sell Instapaper.

Last week, Loren Brichter announced he would be moving to Facebook. I’m still
shell-shocked about that announcement as a very active Letterpress player, now
this. I’m worried.

I will continue to pay for Marco’s products and services, but I am worried
what will happen to Instapaper, which is an important tool for how I acquire
information and do business.

~~~
tomkarlo
Creating a service shouldn't be a lifetime commitment to running it. There
needs to be a way for Marco to continue inventing new products without
dedicating an increasing percentage of his time to supporting existing ones,
and this seems like a reasonable way to allow that.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Sure, I completely understand why he would do it, and he sold the service to
the best party he could think of, but still, I am sad.

------
ishbits
Funny.. Just a few weeks I was wondering if Marco was bored of Instapaper and
tried out Pocket in case he was going to dump it.

Doesn't matter, I ended up liking Pocket better after having been a long time
Instapaper user.

------
designatedInit
Congratulations to Marco. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

~~~
hartror
Ditto. He really is an inspiration.

------
gingerlime
Hope they don't remove the epub download option. Everybody's building iPhone
apps, but last time I checked only Instapaper supported epubs. It's been great
with my kobo reader*

* albeit, I run a script to fix some errors (based on <http://opennomad.com/content/instapaper-epub-issues>)

------
phil
[http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/instapaper/ranking/history/#...](http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/instapaper/ranking/history/#start_date=2009-07-08&end_date=2013-04-26&view=rank&store_id=143441&device=iphone&vtype=day)

~~~
webwright
<http://monosnap.com/image/uHrTKSc7dUyOmuT1Oc5BmtxOV>

------
aeonflux
For at least year Instapaper wasn't really moving forward. Design feels
outdated, the website looks like thrash. Pocket on the other hand looks and
feels pretty awsome. As you can the fact you paid for the app or not has
nothing to do with this outcome so far.

Instapaper situation is the best example, that Marco's jabber that you should
pay for apps if you wan't them to last is just plain wrong. The free vs paid
doesn't really matter in long run. Fortunatlley you can switch from one to
another within a week, so its not much of an investment anyway.

------
nsxwolf
Anyone want to guess at the valuation? Betaworks didn't spend much on Digg,
wonder how deep their pockets are.

~~~
kmfrk
One way to look at it is that the money people paid for Instagram has already
gone to Marco.

What he's "selling" are potential future customers, subscriber fees, and ads.

I don't know what the curve on user adoption looks like, but it seems like a
smart choice from a financial point of view.

It'll be interesting how this fits into the upcoming Digg RSS reader.

~~~
smackfu
I wouldn't be surprised if Instapaper has a free version again very soon.

------
brianwillis
I'm hoping that when Marco says "I've sold a majority stake" he doesn't mean
"I've sold everything". I'm a big Instapaper fan, and I'd hate to see someone
else take over deciding the direction the service should move in.

A big part of Instapaper's success comes from the fact that Marco's done a
great job at steering the ship. He really is a world-class product guy who
knows what to say no to.

Congratulations to Marco and Betaworks. I hope it works out well for all of
us.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _Announcement: betaworks has acquired Instapaper._

I don't think it can be any clearer than this.

<http://betaworks.com>

------
pinder
I've been hoping for innovation in the app for a while now. It'd be nice to
have any sorts of options or filters to help you clear your backlog, such as
"filter by shortest to longest" or "show all half read articles".

Hopefully this deal helps innovating an app that has become a bit stale.

------
splamco
Marco likes to rant about other app devs selling out their users for a buck. I
believe Marco believes that he's somehow different.

------
kgosser
Betaworks.com getting hammered right now. I hope they are better at managing
Instapaper ops!

I tease, I tease. In all seriousness, congrats to Marco. A real hero of The
Internet.

------
rdl
I hope nothing happens to Instapaper. I love this app; after Chrome and Mail,
it's my #3 app on iOS.

------
Uchikoma
Either way, I've payed the one-person-dev for some years, I won't pay Digg.

------
ZaAaV
And I will Instapaper that article...

------
xamdam
Ever since Instapaper got the bright idea to charge monthly for a search
feature, fuck them. Go pocket.

------
sayhitofrank
wondering if betaworks will just use the parser technology to use it for other
products like the "RSS reader" DIGG announced or s.th. else. Maybe they are
trying to build something like www.dotdotdot.me

------
kuebelreiter
okay, will be gone in one year from now. or one and a half. always the same
story with that kind of acquisitions.

