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The next generation of Instapaper

marco.org

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Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#51

Post by [deleted] »

incision wrote: post #49
tomkarlo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it makes a lot of sense to do this. They don't want to become a de-facto mirror for the content, they want to provide it only to people who are actually their users. I'd rather have that, along with a bias towards sharing the original link, than a lot of sharing of the reflowed content.

>They don't want to become a de-facto mirror for the content, they want to provide it only to people who are actually their users. Surely there's a way that could be prevented while retaining the benefit of exposing potential new users to the service? The current sharing feature sends 800 character URLs pointing to email.getpocket.com. I'd think something could be put into and parsed out of that monster string to pre…

[deleted]

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#52

Post by tomkarlo »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #50

I’m saddened by this announcement. I’m an early Instapaper paying subscriber, a The Magazine paying subscriber of the first hour, I’ve read every article on his blog, I’ve listened to all the episodes of Build & Analyze, Accidental Tech and the Neutral podcasts — I’ve spread the word every way I could and engaged with the sponsors of the shows. I became a Tumblr member because of him. Marco has always talked about ho…

Creating a service shouldn't be a lifetime commitment to running it. There needs to be a way for Marco to continue inventing new products without dedicating an increasing percentage of his time to supporting existing ones, and this seems like a reasonable way to allow that.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#53

Post by jrockway »

wklauss wrote: post #33
blairbeckwith wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is classic Marco, nothing to see here. He's just a child who starts this stuff over nothing, from what I've seen.

I would have done the same as Marco. It was unasked for and unnecessary. Pocket is a great app but so its Instapaper and Marco has done a tremendous job over the years by keeping it in shape by himself (with exception of the Android app). This is a way on pissing all over the the efforts of a independent developer. Just because.

It's a "royal dick move" to allow users to copy data between competing applications? Uh, OK.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#54

Post by skeletonjelly »

ambirex wrote: post #6

When I compare this to the Parse/Facebook deal, this seems like a more natural transition. I actually doubt it has much to do with Pocket, instead I think is exactly how Marco put it, grown bigger than a single person could manage. Congrats to both Marco and Betaworks.

If it had grown bigger than one person could manage, why not hire somebody?

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#55

Post by ruswick »

elithrar wrote: post #21
rkudeshi wrote: post #3

I wonder how much this has to do with the rise of Pocket over the last year. It's no secret that Pocket has improved dramatically since rebranding a year ago. And I'm sure most people who are looking for their first "read-later" app are trying Pocket (free) before buying Instapaper ($5). Personally speaking, I bought Instapaper for myself and gifted it to a few other people over the years, but I switched to Pocket a…

Instapaper is nice because I felt like I was paying a reasonable amount for an app that I use regularly. Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning their longevity.

Indeed. Many companies are hesitant to fully activate their advertising apparatus, and go years without making revenues (eg. Tumblr). I worry when I see a company that isn't attempting to accrue meaningful revenues.

I'm actually quite happy when I see that companies begin serving ads substantially.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#56

Post by Samuel_Michon »

tomkarlo wrote: post #52
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #50

I’m saddened by this announcement. I’m an early Instapaper paying subscriber, a The Magazine paying subscriber of the first hour, I’ve read every article on his blog, I’ve listened to all the episodes of Build & Analyze, Accidental Tech and the Neutral podcasts — I’ve spread the word every way I could and engaged with the sponsors of the shows. I became a Tumblr member because of him. Marco has always talked about ho…

Creating a service shouldn't be a lifetime commitment to running it. There needs to be a way for Marco to continue inventing new products without dedicating an increasing percentage of his time to supporting existing ones, and this seems like a reasonable way to allow that.

Sure, I completely understand why he would do it, and he sold the service to the best party he could think of, but still, I am sad.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#57

Post by ruswick »

smackfu wrote: post #38
wklauss wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have done the same as Marco. It was unasked for and unnecessary. Pocket is a great app but so its Instapaper and Marco has done a tremendous job over the years by keeping it in shape by himself (with exception of the Android app). This is a way on pissing all over the the efforts of a independent developer. Just because.

C'mon, that tweet from Steve is exactly the kind of thing Marco would post if Pocket or any of his other competitors were getting bad press.

In fact, this behavior is the very same reason people venerate Pinboard's Twitter account.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#58

Post by muzzamike »

incision wrote: post #43
enra wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also do full-text search for Pro users, and you can sync with Pocket. http://kippt.com

I actually signed up for Kippt when initially searching for a Pocket alternative and there's a lot to like about it. I didn't stick with it or sign up for pro for a couple of reasons. Namely, lack of an app and what I find to be a "cluttered" experience. Perhaps I'm missing something, but if I want to save the page I'm on (I know I can save a link directly with a right-click) to Kippt I hit the extension icon which p…

Kippster, a 3rd party app, has been pretty great for me on iPad.

I was an avid Pocket user. And it's great for saving things you want to read later and then just throw away.

A lot of these articles/videos I want to read later, then save for reference. With Kippt I can send pages to my Inbox exactly like I did with Pocket. Once I read them, if I want to save them for later, I can move them into any 1 of the categories I've set up. I have about 20 categories ranging from "App Store Articles" to "Analytics Videos" to "General Programming Learning".

I can't imagine how I would live without it now.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#59

Post by incision »

elithrar wrote: post #21
rkudeshi wrote: post #3

I wonder how much this has to do with the rise of Pocket over the last year. It's no secret that Pocket has improved dramatically since rebranding a year ago. And I'm sure most people who are looking for their first "read-later" app are trying Pocket (free) before buying Instapaper ($5). Personally speaking, I bought Instapaper for myself and gifted it to a few other people over the years, but I switched to Pocket a…

Instapaper is nice because I felt like I was paying a reasonable amount for an app that I use regularly. Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning their longevity.

>Pocket, although having its own benefits, is free. Any service with ongoing costs (parsing servers) that charges nothing for their app has me questioning their longevity.

Prior to the name change, Pocket offered a $3 "Pro" version.

I'm guessing that Pocket means to be acquired eventually.

Pulse runs a free app parsing/serving from App Engine and took in $9.8M in funding before being acquired by LinkedIn for $90M.

Pocket runs a free app parsing/serving from EC2 and has taken in $7.5M in funding.

I was able to see who would be interested in Pulse and why pretty early on. I'm not sure about the same for Pocket.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#60

Post by jkestner »

skeletonjelly wrote: post #54
ambirex wrote: post #6

When I compare this to the Parse/Facebook deal, this seems like a more natural transition. I actually doubt it has much to do with Pocket, instead I think is exactly how Marco put it, grown bigger than a single person could manage. Congrats to both Marco and Betaworks.

If it had grown bigger than one person could manage, why not hire somebody?

He's stated before he likes the employee-free lifestyle. And there is a huge gap to bridge between "I can do this myself" and "There's enough work to hire a full-time employee".
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