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Leaving Instapaper for Readability

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Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#11

Post by ruswick »

As we all already know, Readability has been running what could be considered a scam by pocketing some of that money simply because the authors don't know about it.

And, I really don't see why I would have a moral obligation to pay for every single article I read. Not every article is worth paying for. 90% of the stuff I read is trash. Plus, a lot of blogs offer their own ways to donate. If a writer is good, they'll get my money anyway. I'm not handing out cash to everyone, and I'm definitely not giving it to Readability.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#12

Post by ryanwatkins »

athst wrote: post #9

I think Readability's model is a little presumptuous. Why do they get to decide unilaterally that they deserve 30% of the revenue? It's not like the App Store where you agreed to it. Given all the work that goes into creating an article, is extracting the text worth 30%? If I was a publisher, I wouldn't think so. To me, Instapaper's approach is much more straightforward. You have to have gone to the publisher's site…

Yes, Instapapers model is more straight forward, but you do not have to go to the publishers site and seen the ads, to add the article.

Instapaper provides and API to add links without visiting the site that is used by a number of other applications.

And I've written an app (http://www.ryanwatkins.net/software/papermache - webOS and Android Instapaper app) that allows you to browser a feed of articles and add them to Instapaper directly.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#13

Post by dmazin »

_frog wrote: post #3

Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his generates nearly no income from Readability's service, e…

I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them. I think I recall Marco talking about the fact that this is on purpose for the previously stated concerns. Also, Instapaper doesn't let you stitch articles broken up into multiple pages.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#14

Post by reidmain »

duck wrote: post #7

I left Instapaper for Readability as well, but my reason was entirely different and a first for me (at least on the web): Marco. I'm not even sure what it is about him exactly, but after listening to some of his Build and Analyze podcasts and reading his slanted blog posts I just found myself not wanting to use or support Instapaper anymore.

I'm still listening to Build & Analyze but I'm one or two more nonsensical episodes away from removing it from iTunes.

The earlier episodes were a lot better in my opinion. Conversation was focused much more on actual development and the way they talked about it was interesting to me. Now they talk about topics that they think are interesting to developers but I guess I'm no longer their target demographic.

Like you I can't quite put my finger on it but there is something about Marco that just rubs me the wrong way. I think as Instapaper has gotten more popular it has gone to Marco's head and he has become a bit arrogant. His motto seems to be "this is how I do it and if you don't agree I don't care because it works for me and I'm making a lot of money".

But it really doesn't matter in the end. Competition is always a good thing. Some people will stay with Instapaper, some people will be converted to Readability but Readability's free price tag should make a lot more people aware of this type of service. If Marco has the ability to keep up then both products should get better.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#15

Post by _frog »

dmazin wrote: post #13
_frog wrote: post #3

Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his generates nearly no income from Readability's service, e…

I know that lots of services let you add to Instapaper, but with Instapaper itself it's impossible to add articles without visiting them. I think I recall Marco talking about the fact that this is on purpose for the previously stated concerns. Also, Instapaper doesn't let you stitch articles broken up into multiple pages.

Actually multi-page stitching just got added to the browser bookmarklet, relevant blog post: http://blog.instapaper.com/post/18556429689

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#17

Post by quinndupont »

Ever wonder if any publishers have actually collected any of your contribution? There's NO accountability about how much money actually makes it to publishers; since Readability does not seek the publishers, each publisher must be aware of their money, and go collect it from Readability, and if they do not, eventually it becomes Readability's. It's a great model, and the ethics are wonderful, but it suffers from this fatal flaw.

Re: Leaving Instapaper for Readability

#20

Post by bigiain »

motoford wrote: post #4

Do you feel guilty when you skip commercials on your TiVo? I don't, sorry. An ad on a page is no different than a billboard or some other passive advertising. I am not required to notice it.

http://blakemccreary.com/2012/03/banksy-on-advertising-quote... *

"You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs." -- Banksy

* Just one of _many_ hits on google reproducing it, I'm not endorsing that blog in particular…

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