Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone • Hacker News Board

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#21

Post by OberstKrueger » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

purple-dragon wrote: post #4

Does anyone have experience to share re: Instapaper vs. Pocket (or something better)?

I've been using Pocket the last few months after having used Instapaper for a few years.

For iOS, I find the Instapaper app to be a lot better than Pocket. A ton of font options that don't rely upon paying the Premium subscription, and the UI is less obtrusive. I also like that when you share links from the Instapaper app, it sends the actual link. Pocket's app shares links as redirects, so everything shows up as a shorthand pocket.co/nnnnnn type of link. Both can have links added by an iOS share sheet, which is convenient. Pocket does have a nice feature in the app where it can refresh the article, in case you know what you're reading is outdate.

No Android devices, so no clue how it works on that platform.

The web experience is mostly equal, although Instapaper looks cleaner and still has more font options available than Pocket.

Neither platform is perfect with regards to transcribing articles. While I haven't done direct comparisons, it seems to me that Pocket falls back on displaying the original webpage more often when the site isn't a normal blog or news article. When it does transcribe the page down, it seems to include less non-article stuff(social media links, etc.) than Instapaper does. It seems to be a wash there.

For my own personal conclusion, I like Instapaper more, but Pocket works well enough.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#22

Post by gnicholas » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

purple-dragon wrote: post #4

Does anyone have experience to share re: Instapaper vs. Pocket (or something better)?

I found the general feature set to be similar, but Pocket has pretty decent article discovery/curation. I now use Pocket exclusively.

The only downside is that a decent chunk of their content (~5%) is from Business Insider, and there is no way to mute/hide a source (News Republic offers this). But they've got plenty of good sources (NYT, New Yorker), and a pretty good recommendation algorithm.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#23

Post by __jal » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

pgtruesdell wrote: post #16

emodendroket wrote: post #3

Looking forward to Pinterest shutting Instapaper down in 2 years.

Hello Pinboard.

The water's still very pleasant over here.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#24

Post by pervycreeper » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

purple-dragon wrote: post #4

Does anyone have experience to share re: Instapaper vs. Pocket (or something better)?

Pocket lacks the very useful send-to-kindle feature in Instapaper. Instapaper frequently fails to send images properly in their kindle digests, but it's still better than nothing (the key feature IMO). On the other hand, the Instapaper iOS app has some kind of problem with syncing, taking an inordinate amount of time to download a few articles (with the potential to ding you with substantial data costs if you open the app at the wrong time).

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#25

Post by rgbrenner » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

So what's the plan here. Just two months since Pinterest acquired them, they've shutdown Instaparser, moved their team across the country (literally: NY to SF.. I wonder how many employees quit instead), discontinued Premium--their sole source of revenue(?), and committed to no-ads... sounds like they have no monetization strategy at all anymore.

This doesn't look good.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#26

Post by idlewords » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

mtmail wrote: post #2

On the one hand I like new free features, especially the search. On the other hand Instapaper got acquired by Pinterest ( http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661 ) and if they no longer make money from premium subscriptions and the service is ads-free, then how will they generate revenue? Selling publishers premium spots in my reading queue?

Either Pinterest is interested in running Instapaper at a loss, or they've found a way to make this financially worth their while.

Or they want to grow Instapaper at the expense of Pocket, and then do something else with it.

Disclaimer: I am a competitor to Instapaper and talk smack a lot.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#27

Post by codemac » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #25

So what's the plan here. Just two months since Pinterest acquired them, they've shutdown Instaparser, moved their team across the country (literally: NY to SF.. I wonder how many employees quit instead), discontinued Premium--their sole source of revenue(?), and committed to no-ads... sounds like they have no monetization strategy at all anymore. This doesn't look good.

My thought is that pinterest has a solid model for monetization for people who bookmark & read things they find on the internet.

That doesn't involve premium accounts but requires many many more users.. so maybe do a huge push by making the instapaper features free in a PR push, and work to get their active monthly users way up.

Do you think that's possible?

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#28

Post by SloopJon » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #25

So what's the plan here. Just two months since Pinterest acquired them, they've shutdown Instaparser, moved their team across the country (literally: NY to SF.. I wonder how many employees quit instead), discontinued Premium--their sole source of revenue(?), and committed to no-ads... sounds like they have no monetization strategy at all anymore. This doesn't look good.

> I wonder how many employees quit instead

I thought I read that it was just a team of three, all of whom chose to move.

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#29

Post by skiman10 » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #18

phmagic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a heavy user of Instapaper and switched to Pocket. The reading interface for Instapaper is much better. Pocket has more clients, browser plug ins, etc so you can take it anywhere (When I switched Instapaper Android wasn't available). Both are lame when bookmarking things like github repos. I really want these services to open up their engine so that I can write a plug in for displaying bookmarked gists or repos…

I run a rival site to these. Can you email me a description of what this kind of plugin would do? (support@pinboard.in)

As someone who is concerned with where Instapaper is heading, how well does your site compete with the likes of Instapaper or Pocket?

Re: Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone

#30

Post by bthdonohue » Tue, Nov 01, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

mtmail wrote: post #2

On the one hand I like new free features, especially the search. On the other hand Instapaper got acquired by Pinterest ( http://blog.instapaper.com/post/149374303661 ) and if they no longer make money from premium subscriptions and the service is ads-free, then how will they generate revenue? Selling publishers premium spots in my reading queue?

Hi there,

Brian from Instapaper here. We will not be serving advertisements in your Instapaper queue. The value Instapaper provides to Pinterest in terms of parser capabilities and aggregate information about links is enough to justify the small operation cost of running the service.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you have.

Brian