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The next generation of Instapaper

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Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#61

Post by mikec3k »

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.

I subscribe to Instapaper but I switched to Pocket because I prefer their UI. I keep begging them to take my money.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#62

Post by dannowatts »

micampe wrote: post #45
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…

There is one simple thing that prevents me from using Pocket: pagination. It does’t work, it’s fiddly, it’s unclear how to turn it on, when you manage to activate it it switches off with the tiniest gesture. Pagination is the big Instapaper feature for me.

i could be wrong, but isn't pagination just swiping to the right to activate it? and then to deactivate it, you would just scroll the content normally.

that work for you?

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#64

Post by zw »

marbletiles wrote: post #11
abdophoto wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely had something to do with it. I don't think anyone would say that Instapaper is 4x better than Pocket ($3.99 vs Free). If anything Pocket has clearly made a name for itself with better design and its new Pocket for Publishers API. I think Instapaper saw its peak about 6 month - 1 year ago and with The Magazine doing well, it was smart of Marco to sell it off in my opinion.

Instapaper's parsing is 3x better at least. Very often I see Pocket lose chunks of articles over innocuous divs.

And I'm often reading those articles in Pocket, which means I never see them at all. Very frustrating.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#65

Post by sgdesign »

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…

How does Loren Brichter moving to Facebook affect Letterpress in any way? Are you worried you'll now be getting pop-ups asking you to "like the word XYLOPHONE on Facebook"?

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#66

Post by duck »

blairbeckwith wrote: post #26
barredo wrote: post #23

Twitter can be dramatic https://twitter.com/SteveStreza/status/327550484745445376

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'm glad he does things like this on such a regular frequency as it reminds me to avoid his next project.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#67

Post by tptacek »

ruswick wrote: post #57
smackfu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, everything popular you don't like is because people just love assholes.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#68

Post by lispython »

In the article "Talent acquisitions" http://www.marco.org/2012/07/20/talent-acquisitions Marco criticized Pulp, Wallet, Sparrow and he wrote:

Instapaper has had multiple similar inquiries from large companies over the last few years. We’ve never gotten very far in talks because I don’t want Instapaper to shut down, I don’t want to move my family across the country, and they didn’t want to pay enough — for them, they’ll pay a premium to hire me, but they won’t pay much for a service they’ll shut down immediately and an app they’ll throw away.

I was only able to reject those offers because Instapaper is a healthy business, and the life that Instapaper provides for me and my family is better than what the big companies offered."

If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company.

So it's not a "Talent acquisition", but how could we still keep the software and services around that us enjoy in the future?

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#69

Post by SoftwareMaven »

incision wrote: post #59
elithrar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Po…

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

And those acquisitions work out so well for the product, especially smaller, more niche products.

If they've taken that much money, they are going to have to provide a strategy to monetize. If they are doing it for free, it means they are selling analytics about what you are reading to somebody else.

For myself, I'll pay for the app.

Re: The next generation of Instapaper

#70

Post by mtgx »

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.

I don't understand why people care so much about the "longevity" of an app that at most saves their data for a week, like Pocket, or something like Google's Keep, a notes app.

Who cares if it dies in 2 years? You might be switching through 3 other alternatives by then anyway. And you can still save your week worth of data if they announce the shut down anyway.

It's not like say an e-mail service, where you might actually want to keep your years worth of data.

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