
Instapaper is joining Pinterest - ropiku
http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661
======
brians
Bummer. I love and use instapaper, gathering articles for a few weeks to read
at altitude. It's a great product, and I paid for a subscription these last
years in the hopes that I could therefore continue to enjoy it.

Now it's sold to Pinterest, one of the two sites I don't bother with links
to—because I know Pinterest and Quora will require me to sign in rather than
show me what they showed a search engine.

What else operates in this space? Pocket, I remember. ReadItLater used to
exist, maybe still? Does Pinboard do this somehow, maybe with an RSS reader?
Or do I have to pay for Paperback?

~~~
athenot
If you're on macOS / iOS, you can use the reading list. When you add items to
your reading list from Safari, they get synced to your iOS device so you can
read them offline from any of your devices.

It does require iCloud but nothing beyond that.

~~~
derefr
I use Mobile Safari on iOS but Chrome on macOS. This means that, as much as I
love Safari's Reading List, it's basically "unavailable" to me on the desktop.
To put something in the Reading List from Chrome, I have to focus the URL bar,
copy the URL, open Safari, paste and go to the URL, and then ⌘⇧D to put it in
the list. (I can also right-click on the URL bar in Chrome and use the "Add to
Reading List" OS Service, but the mousing involved is actually nearly as much
work as the series of keyboard-gestures in the above.)

The fact that there's no way to get anything to actively sync between Chrome
and iCloud is maddening. Why has nobody reverse-engineered the iCloud API and
made a Chrome extension to talk to it?

~~~
pcl
I've recently switched my primary browsing back to Safari on my 2012-era
MacBook Air. Battery life is noticeably better.

I still launch Chrome and FF regularly for development, but my tab-hell lives
in Safari now.

~~~
freehunter
Oh man other browsers kill the battery compared to Safari. It's not even a
comparison.

------
bthdonohue
Hi all,

Brian from Instapaper here. There seem to be a number of comments expressing
concerns about the acquisition, and I wanted to just jump in and offer to
answer any questions you have about the acquisition.

Based on the comments I've read below the main concerns seem to be that
Instapaper will either be shutdown or materially changed in a way that effects
the end-user experience. I can tell you that neither of those are the plan for
the short-term or long-term of the product, and I am personally looking
forward to providing you with the same great service under a new owner.

Brian Donohue Instapaper CEO

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Based on the comments I've read below the main concerns seem to be that
> Instapaper will either be shutdown or materially changed in a way that
> effects the end-user experience. I can tell you that neither of those are
> the plan for the short-term or long-term of the product, and I am personally
> looking forward to providing you with the same great service under a new
> owner.

As a person who has been part of a small company / start-up acquisition 2
times now this is _literally_ the line _every single CEO says_ when they're
bought. Now I'm not saying you're lying but plans change and except for very,
very few exceptions this is always wrong.

Congratulations either way and I wish you luck!

~~~
tb303
Just came here to say that too. There's a fair amount of hubris in the
founder/ceo promising things they cannot promise. I realize bthdonohue is
doing it for the sake of employees and their enthusiasm to continue with the
acquisition, but making claims like this undermines your credibility when you
EOL the product in two years.

(I was part of one of these acquisitions and thankfully our founder made no
such promises, and instead told us "nothing is going to change right now, but
I can't tell you what the future holds for us")

~~~
droopyEyelids
Yeah it gives me a moment of 'the feels' to see him still referring to himself
as Instapaper CEO.

It's like man, you're VP of the Instapaper division now. And you're going to
keep your head above the water a lot better if you know it, compared to
imagining you're someone you are not.

------
bishnu
Worth re-reading Marco Arment's blog post about selling Instapaper 3 years
ago: [https://marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-
generation](https://marco.org/2013/04/25/instapaper-next-generation)

"Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t
want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six
months."

Oof.

~~~
TillE
He "sold a majority stake", which means he still owned part of Instapaper. I
assume Pinterest bought the whole thing and therefore gave Marco a large chunk
of money? Nice for him.

~~~
ihuman
Even in 2016 Marco is still selling things. Never change Marco, never change.

------
overcast
Up next.
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

~~~
Analemma_
Based on your username, for a minute there I thought you might be Marco
Arment, which would've made this comment even more hilariously cynical.

~~~
overcast
Been using the overcast username since 1994. Also, I'm much better looking. :)

------
fishtoaster
> The Instapaper team will be moving from betaworks in New York City to
> Pinterest’s headquarters in San Francisco

I wonder how the instapaper team feels about that (and/or how much say they
had in it).

~~~
Analemma_
The "must be willing to relocate to San Francisco" meme now even applies to
companies with no presence in San Francisco.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Yep.

LinkedIn now needs a pre-canned "No thanks, I'm not interested in moving to
Silicon Valley" response.

------
markpapadakis
I used Instapaper for a long time before I switched to a Pocket.

There were issues with their parser they never fixed, has been consistently
slow, articles would often be lost even though they were "saved" according to
the apps that used the Instapaper API(or its browser extensions), it would
take forever to download content over 3G ( maybe the client was downloading
it? ). It just never got better for me.

They did introduce a killer feature(narration) and I switched to Instapaper
from Pocket again for that feature alone (2 hours or commute time). Still
annoying to use and as soon as Pocket implemented the same feature, I jumped
ship again.

Pocket seems to be fast(at downloading content, and the iOS app is very
responsive), their parser is improving and it's now by far my most used app on
my phone.

I hope they get the resources they need to really improve their service
though. They have lots of happy users and that must mean they are still doing
something right.

------
jwr
Well, they didn't use the word "journey", which is a plus.

But I'm worried. I find that increasingly my interests do not align with the
interests of large companies looking for quick growth and large-scale
"monetization". I would like to see more sustainable business models, where
the goal isn't mad growth and sale to a larger entity, but long-term steady
business.

------
idlewords
Ahahahahaha!

~~~
Numberwang
Mediocrity triumphs again!

~~~
idlewords
And laziness! This kind of thing reinforces my worst instincts.

------
dopamean
If it's really going to be run as a separate property why does the team need
to move to SF?

~~~
dexterdog
Because it's not.

------
grandalf
Instapaper is one of my favorite apps and I hope it doesn't change and that I
can always access all my stored articles forever and ever.

------
nroach
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly
cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has
happened.

------
dmix
Good opportunity to build an OSS alternative? Or even a side-project... in the
possible event Instapaper gets sidelined. That always seems to happen. With
the exception of maybe Reddit.

~~~
niftich
Can you summarize what their features are?

From a quick web search, it seems to be:

\- Parsing a page for main body content, removing cruft, and reflowing it into
an aesthetically pleasing layout

\- Cloud bookmarking these artifacts

So how does this not run up against anti-scraping TOS provisions? Does money
change hands between the publisher and the content-reflower?

~~~
joshuak
For me the ability to have articles read to me on my phone while on the go is
_the_ key feature. I pay because of that feature alone, and would pay a LOT
more to see general improvements in that direction.

Without that it's just another in a long series of fresh buckets to put under
the leaky pipe of bookmarks.

Oh and...

Fuck you Pinterest and the wedding planners you rode in on!

------
leonatan
We'll read about it here soon:

[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
reiichiroh
Is Readability the corporation still solvent? They haven't had any app updates
in over a year.

~~~
akamaozu
No idea but it's been driving me nuts. I can't read offline bedbugs their
Android app is broken.

How are you currently using Readability?

------
x1798DE
I got an email to this effect today. I don't remember signing up to get
emails, though presumably it was years ago if I did. I unsubscribed and marked
as spam, but why is this something that required emailing people about?

------
elorant
So what kind of value does Instapaper adds/will add to Pinterest? Will there
be a pin it later functionality? I fail to see how Pinterest gains from such
an acquisition.

~~~
drizzzler
They probably wanted the founder.

~~~
harryh
The founder (Marco Arment) sold Instapaper to Betaworks years ago.

------
d_theorist
Is anybody else mildly annoyed by this trend of announcing acquisitions as 'x
is joining y'? What's wrong with saying that y has bought x?

~~~
exolymph
Don't they imply slightly different things? To me "joining" says merging teams
and product goals, whereas "bought" could mean the smaller entity will still
be freestanding.

~~~
d_theorist
Perhaps. To me it sounds like a bit of a weasely and vague term. But of course
different people use words differently.

------
tedmiston
I pay for premium today... I wonder if this line will disappear from the
product page:

    
    
                                                  Free  Premium
          
        ...
        Support Instapaper's continued operation           √
    
    

[https://www.instapaper.com/premium](https://www.instapaper.com/premium)

------
adamnemecek
This is offtopic but am I the only one who keeps confusing Pinterest and
Pinboard?

~~~
__derek__
No, and I think that's part of the joke for Pinboard.

~~~
idlewords
It's even better because in a bit of a dick move, they tried to buy
pinboard.com back in 2009 or 2010. I say "dick move" because Pinboard predates
Pinterest and they were aware of me.

~~~
defen
Does this mean they're now guilty of trademark infringement (Apple Computers
vs Apple Records style) and you can take all their VC money? "Instapaper By
Pinterest™" seems pretty similar to Pinboard.

~~~
tedmiston
Yes, Pinboard with his massive legal team.

------
ryanmarsh
I use Instapaper to highlight research sources from the web. Then export my
notes to markdown using the iOS app. I hope to God they don't ruin Instapaper.
I really need it.

------
Philipp__
Sad panda. I had amazing time with this app. Now I have to find alternative
that will work well on iOS and macOS. :(

------
ryanmarsh
Instapaper to me is the epitome of doing something that "doesn't scale", and
yet it did.

~~~
nicky0
How does it not scale? It's an automated service.

~~~
ryanmarsh
Ever tried to write a web scraper that works on every website on the internet?

------
leejoramo
What do people use for the type of content extraction that the Instaparser API
provides?

~~~
mtmail
Readability,
[https://github.com/masukomi/ar90-readability](https://github.com/masukomi/ar90-readability)

------
S_A_P
Pinstapaperist?

------
tempodox
Too bad. It was nice while it lasted.

------
romanovtexas
Instapaper'd the link!

------
Cenk
:(

------
ihuman
[Edited to be deleted by user since I can't delete this]

~~~
pc86
> _we will keep Instaparser running until November 1, 2016._

------
protomyth
Its really not "joining" if you are cancelling a service as part of the
announcement. What is so wrong with actually saying "we were acquired" and the
new owner does not value some / all of our existing customers?

~~~
jonknee
You should read the post.

> For you, the Instapaper end user and customer, nothing changes. The
> Instapaper team will be moving from betaworks in New York City to
> Pinterest’s headquarters in San Francisco, and we’ll continue to make
> Instapaper a great place to save and read articles.

They are shutting down a developer product Instaparser that I don't think had
much traction (first I've heard of it actually) and is less than six months
old.

~~~
protomyth
you should read the post

> As we focus on the future of the user experience, we’ll be sunsetting our
> developer product, Instaparser. Starting today, we will cease signups for
> Instaparser and halt billing for existing customers. In order to ensure a
> smooth transition for current users, we will keep Instaparser running until
> November 1, 2016.

[edit: parent added another sentence after my reply]

~~~
jonknee
Yes, the API that no one uses and was announced in April. The product
Instapaper that is in the headline and is what everyone knows about is not
going anywhere.

~~~
ihuman
[Edited to be deleted by user since I can't delete this]

~~~
pc86
Pedantry aside, if you're as big as Instapaper and you launch a product that
50 people use for side projects, you can safely say that nobody uses it.

~~~
ihuman
[Edited to be deleted by user since I can't delete this]

~~~
pc86
My point was that in the broader scheme of things, a trivial number of people
have even _heard_ of Instaparser, let alone those who have heard about it,
care about it, have signed up for an account, used it for anything beyond a
side project, and are actually paying money for it.

