

Spool Is Instapaper On Steroids   - lladnar
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/spool-is-instapaper-on-steroids/

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martingordon
> "The app is free for now, while the founders consider monetization options
> involving freemium services, search offerings and mobile CDN models."

Yes, this always ends well. Every download Spool gets loses them money. For
every download Instapaper gets, Marco makes money.

And yes, Spool may be more feature rich than Instapaper, but when is being "on
steroids" a good thing?

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watty
You seem to have a lot of negativity - what's wrong with starting free to get
a foot in the market? Also, being "on steroids" is and has always been a good
thing. They also say that it's an "evolved" version of Instapaper.

~~~
ashrust
I agree, free at first worked for PayPal.

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gks
Except paypal works with money almost exclusively. Thus, it's easy for them to
monetize it.

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sdz
This is why I think it was shortsighted for Instapaper to reject outside
funding. As much as I like Instapaper, it is very much still a single-platform
app with very limited scope (text-only), and the app hasn't been updated in
several months. Meanwhile its competitors (like Readitlater and now these
guys) are getting funded, rolling out features, and attacking this market with
much greater resources.

~~~
_frog
Marco has actually stated that he has 4.0 pretty much ready to ship as soon as
iOS 5 comes out. However due to being built against the 5.0 SDK he can't
release it any earlier than that.

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rglover
Just watched their demo on TC disrupt and it looks wonderful. I've been really
into the content scrubbing systems that have been coming out as of late. This
reminded me a lot of my current favorite, Gimme Bar
(<http://www.gimmebar.com>), but much smoother of an experience. Signed up for
the beta. You should too.

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joshu
I was on stage for that. Whee!

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ashrust
I like this a lot but it does seem more like a feature for Instapaper and (my
fave) Read it Later. I would expect them to get acquired or copied.

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avichal
Hi,

We're hoping to build a large, successful business. There is a lot of
technology behind this that is a legitimate barrier to entry so we don't
expect this will be copied in any meaningful way soon. We'll be writing blog
posts to explain details of why what we've built is so difficult to copy in
the coming weeks.

