Instapaper

Instapaper
Type of site
 Online bookmarking, saving articles for later reading
Owner Pinterest
Created by Marco Arment
Website www.instapaper.com
Alexa rank 7,121 (March 2015)[1]
Commercial Yes
Registration Yes
Launched January 28, 2008 (2008-01-28)
Current status Active

Instapaper is a bookmarking service owned by Pinterest. It allows web content to be saved so it can be "read later" on a different device, such as an e-reader, smartphone, tablet. The service was founded in 2008 by Marco Arment and had about 2 million users as of late 2011.[2]

History

Instapaper started out as a simple web service, in late 2007, with a "Read Later" bookmarklet and stripped-down "Text" view for articles. When it launched publicly on January 28, 2008,[3] its simplicity rapidly earned accolades from the press, including Daring Fireball[4] and TechCrunch.[5]

In April 2013, Arment sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks.[6] Afterward, the service's web interface was redesigned.[7]

On August 23, 2016, Instapaper was acquired by social networking service Pinterest. The service will continue to operate, and the Instapaper staff will work on development for both Instapaper and Pinterest.[8] On November 1, 2016, Instapaper announced that it would discontinue its subscription model and offer its "Premium" features to all users.[9]

Features

Instapaper can be used via a web-based interface, or through mobile apps for Android and iOS. Within a web browser, a "Read Later" bookmarklet can be used to save pages to a user's personal unread queue on Instapaper. Every article is automatically reformatted to remove excessive formatting and graphics.[10]

Instapaper was initially distributed as a paid app. Later, the app became a free service, but with certain features exclusive to a "Pro" version of the app, and later a "Instapaper Premium" subscription, such as ad-free browsing, full-text search, and voice dictation on supported platforms. These features became free for all users on November 1, 2016.[9]

iOS

Instapaper's free iPhone app (removed from the App Store on March 12, 2011[11]) with offline reading was one of the first apps in the App Store on July 12, 2008.[12] Instapaper's paid app, then called Instapaper Pro, launched shortly afterward on August 26, 2008 and introduced tilt scrolling, which automatically scrolls a column of text when the device is tilted slightly up or down.[13]

On March 10, 2011, with the launch of the 3.0 app, Instapaper added social sharing and browsing features.[14] Later in 2011, the redesigned 4.0 app added full-text search of all saved articles for customers with the optional $1/month subscription.[15] #

The Instapaper iPad app launched with the iPad itself on April 3, 2010.[16][17]

Android

The Instapaper for Android was built by development shop Mobelux in 2012 and supports Android phones and tablets.

Kindle

An automatic send-to-Kindle feature was added on March 8, 2009.[18] The Kindle feature alone is used by over 60,000 Kindle owners as of late 2011.[19] Manually sending individual articles, or digests of recent articles, from the Instapaper app is currently a Subscriber feature.

The Feature

On June 1, 2008, Instapaper launched Give Me Something to Read, a standalone website that featured a few high-quality, longform, nonfiction articles every day from Instapaper's most frequently saved articles.[20]

Unlike a conventional social news website, which carries stories posted automatically by popularity, Give Me Something to Read is human-edited. Marco Arment was the editor for the site's first year. On July 27, 2009, Arment hired Richard Dunlop-Walters as a part-time contractor to take over as editor.[21] As of March 2011, Dunlop-Walters is Instapaper's only employee besides Arment.[22]

On March 22, 2012, Give Me Something to Read was renamed The Feature.[23] The articles are still hand-picked, and they are featured in Instapaper's website as The Feature, and in the iOS app as the The Feature section.

Reception

Instapaper has been positively reviewed by publications including The New York Times,[24] The Wall Street Journal,[25] PC Magazine,[26] Macworld,[27] and Wired.[28]

Competitors and similar services

Instapaper is one of several "read it later"[29] (also known as "read later"[30] or "saving"[31]) services. In November 2013, Mashable named Instapaper and the following four clients as the "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps";[32] they all support a variety of devices and other apps.

Marco Arment observed about The Feature (formerly known as Give Me Something to Read): "The very similar Longform and Longreads both started significantly later than Give Me Something To Read but always got a lot more attention, with Longreads fueled especially by its active Twitter presence. They’ve both done great things, but I always believed that Give Me Something To Read deserved a similar level of attention that it never seemed to achieve."[40]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Instapaper Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved March 20, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Instapaper: Press and Media Kit". Archived from the original on November 26, 2011. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  3. ↑ Marco Arment (January 28, 2008). "Instapaper". Marco.org. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  4. ↑ John Gruber (January 30, 2008). "Instapaper". Daring Fireball. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  5. ↑ Henry Work (January 30, 2008). "Simple Bookmarking Now Available with Instapaper". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  6. ↑ "Instapaper acquired by Betaworks, owner of Digg". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  7. ↑ "Instapaper gets complete redesign after Betaworks purchase, new mobile apps soon". The Verge. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  8. ↑ Lynley, Matthew. "Pinterest acquires Instapaper, which will live on as a separate app". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 23 August 2016.
  9. 1 2 "Instapaper drops monthly subscriptions". The Verge. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
  10. ↑ Tweney, Dylan (August 28, 2009). "Instapaper: A $5 App That Justifies Your iPhone Purchase". Wired.
  11. ↑ "Why Instapaper Free is taking an extended vacation". April 28, 2011. Retrieved August 24, 2016.
  12. ↑ "Instapaper: Now available offline". July 12, 2008. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  13. ↑ "Instapaper Pro with tilt scrolling". August 26, 2008. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  14. ↑ "Instapaper 3.0 is here". March 10, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  15. ↑ "Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone". October 17, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  16. ↑ Brian X. Chen (April 1, 2010). "10 Apps We're Excited to Try on iPad Launch Day". Wired. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  17. ↑ Mitch Wagner (April 13, 2010). "The eight best iPad apps so far". Macworld. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Kindle support now available". March 8, 2009. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  19. ↑ "Build and Analyze #56". December 19, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  20. ↑ "Officially launching Give Me Something To Read". June 1, 2008. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  21. ↑ "About Give Me Something To Read". Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  22. ↑ "How many employees does Instapaper have?". March 21, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  23. ↑ "The Feature". Retrieved March 29, 2012.
  24. ↑ Damon Darlin (December 11, 2010). "Feel Free to Read This Later, on Your Phone". The New York Times. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  25. ↑ Emily Glazer (October 21, 2011). "Worth It? Saving Websites to Read Offline". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
  26. ↑ Dan Costa (October 8, 2010). "Instapaper Pro v2.2". PC Magazine. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  27. ↑ Dan Frakes (May 14, 2010). "Instapaper". Macworld. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  28. ↑ Charlie Sorrel (March 11, 2011). "Instapaper 3 Adds Sharing, Curated Articles and Plain Old Speed". Wired. Retrieved December 20, 2011.
  29. ↑ CHRISTINE CHAN (March 10, 2012). "It's The Battle of the Read It Later Apps! Read It Later vs. Instapaper vs. Readability". AppAdvice.
  30. ↑ Whitson Gordon (August 27, 2013). ""Read Later" Apps Compared: Pocket vs. Instapaper vs. Readability". LifeHacker.
  31. ↑ Emily Glazer (October 21, 2011). "Worth it? Saving Websites to Read Offline". Wall Street Journal.
  32. ↑ Sarah Ang (October 10, 2013). "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps". Mashable.
  33. ↑ Adam Pash (November 14, 2007). "Save a Link for Later with Read It Later". Lifehacker.
  34. ↑ Nate Weiner (October 2008). "Read It Later 0.99 Released". Idea Shower Blog.
  35. ↑ Nate Weiner (April 2009). "Read It Later iPhone App Released". Idea Shower Blog.
  36. ↑ Sarah Ang (October 10, 2013). "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps: Pocket". Mashable.
  37. ↑ Sarah Ang (October 10, 2013). "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps: Readability". Mashable.
  38. ↑ Sarah Ang (October 10, 2013). "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps: Evernote Clearly". Mashable.
  39. ↑ Sarah Ang (October 10, 2013). "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps: ReadKit". Mashable.
  40. ↑ "The Feature". Marco.org. March 22, 2012.
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