
Instapaper Releases A Full API — With A Brilliant, Unique Twi$t - taylorbuley
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/09/instapaper-api/
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smoody
When MG Siegler uses title superlatives, such as "Brilliant," "Genius," etc.,
you can usually replace them with NOP. ;-)

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jsm386
At this point he's copying and pasting articles from The Onion:
<http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/grotesque-macbook/>

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wccrawford
tl;dr - Article goes into how you have to either limit the API or charge for
it... Then says that they instead... Charged for it! -sigh- Not that unique.
Okay, they charged for something else and that came with it... It's still
charging for it.

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DougBTX
The twist is that he is charging his _users_ for API access - normally it
would be a convoluted process where the third party developers pay to use the
API, then they try to monetise the users via subscription or ads. This is a
smart way to do it.

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ZoFreX
Clever? Yes. Unique? No. Spotify have "libspotify" [1] which allows developers
to do pretty much anything (you could create a completely functional Spotify
client yourself, which has actually been done [2]), but users can only use
your application if they have a premium account.

[1] <http://developer.spotify.com/en/libspotify/overview/>

[2] <http://spotyxbmc.tumblr.com/>

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abossy
This is great news. However, it's unclear how the requirement to have users
subscribed to Instapaper should be communicated to the users of third-party
apps. Is there an easy way to subscribe new users? Does Instapaper provide any
library support for this as part of its API?

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GBKS
Isn't the result of this that users have to pay twice? Once for Instapaper,
and once for whichever app they are using to access Instapaper?

Granted, 1$/month is low, but making people pay twice (only for apps that
charge, of course) could be problematic.

It's a nice approach, just seems like it comes with its own set of issues.

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cpr
No, I read it that apps only work for paid users (who only need pay once).

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clawr
Once for the Instapaper subscription, once to buy the app from the third party
developer (if it's not free)

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StavrosK
Yes, but this is sort of like people having to buy a router even though they
pay for their net connection.

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true_religion
More to me like having people buy software even though they already paid for
their computer.

Instapaper is the backend. The app is the added value. Likely the 3rd party
app isn't going to eclipse the brand of Intapaper so they'll be selling their
added value directly to existing Instapaper subscribers.

