Instapaper

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Instapaper
Instapaper Logo.png
Instapaper web reader example.png
An example of an article being read in the website
Type of site
Online bookmarking, saving articles for later reading
OwnerInstant Paper, Inc. (previously Pinterest)
Created by Marco Arment
URL www.instapaper.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationYes
LaunchedJanuary 28, 2008;16 years ago (2008-01-28)
Current statusActive

Instapaper is a social bookmarking service that allows web content to be saved so it can be "read later" on a different device, such as an e-reader, smartphone, or tablet. The service was founded in 2008 by Marco Arment. [1] In April 2013, Arment sold a majority stake to Betaworks [2] and by mid 2016 Pinterest acquired the company. [3] In July 2018, ownership of Instapaper was transferred from Pinterest to a newly formed company Instant Paper, Inc. The transition was completed on August 6, 2018. [4] [5]

Contents

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 Marco Arment launched the service publicly on January 28, 2008, [6] its simplicity rapidly earned accolades from the press, including Daring Fireball [7] and TechCrunch. [8]

In April 2013, Arment sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. [2] Afterward, the service's web interface was redesigned. [9]

On August 23, 2016, Instapaper was acquired by social networking service Pinterest. The service continued to operate, and the Instapaper staff worked on development for both Instapaper and Pinterest. [3] On November 1, 2016, Instapaper announced that it would discontinue its subscription model and offer its "Premium" features to all users. [10] On July 16th, 2018, it was announced that Pinterest would sell Instapaper to InstantPaper, Inc, "a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013." [11] [12]

On May 23, 2018, Instapaper announced that it had suspended its services for residents of the European Union in order to address compliance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. [13] Service was restored on August 7, 2018. [14]

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. [15]

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 an "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. [10]

iOS

Instapaper's free iPhone app (removed from the App Store on March 12, 2011 [16] ) with offline reading was one of the first apps in the App Store on July 12, 2008. [17] [ better source needed ] 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. [18]

On March 10, 2011, with the launch of the 3.0 app, Instapaper added social sharing and browsing features. [19] Later in 2011, the redesigned 4.0 app added full-text search of all saved articles for customers with the optional $1/month subscription. [20]

The Instapaper iPad app launched with the iPad itself on April 3, 2010. [21] [22]

Android

The Instapaper for Android was built by development shop Mobelux [23] in 2012 and supports Android phones and tablets.

Kindle

An automatic send-to-Kindle feature was added on March 8, 2009. [24] The Kindle feature alone is used by over 60,000 Kindle owners as of late 2011. [25] 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. [26]

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. [27] As of March 2011, Dunlop-Walters was Instapaper's only employee besides Arment.

On March 22, 2012, Give Me Something to Read was renamed The Feature. [28] The articles are still hand-picked, and they are featured in Instapaper's website as The Feature, and in the iOS app as The Feature section.

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. [29]

Reception

Instapaper has been positively reviewed by publications including The New York Times , [30] The Wall Street Journal , [31] PC Magazine , [32] Macworld , [33] and Wired . [34] [21]

Competitors and similar services

Instapaper is one of several "read it later" [35] (also known as "read later" [36] or "saving" [31] ) services. In November 2013, Mashable named Instapaper and the following four clients as the "5 Best Read-It-Later Apps"; [37] they all support a variety of devices and other apps.

See also

Related Research Articles

Evernote is a note-taking and task-management application developed by the Evernote Corporation. It is intended for archiving and creating notes with embedded photos, audio, and saved web content. Notes are stored in virtual "notebooks" and can be tagged, annotated, edited, searched, and exported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Reader</span> Defunct RSS/Atom feed aggregator formerly operated by Google

Google Reader is a discontinued RSS/Atom feed aggregator operated by Google. It was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell and launched on October 7, 2005, through Google Labs. Google Reader grew in popularity to support a number of programs which used it as a platform for serving news and information to users. Google shut down Google Reader on July 1, 2013, citing declining use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E-reader</span> Device for reading e-books

An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digg</span> Social media/news aggregator website

Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. The hardware platform, which Amazon subsidiary Lab126 developed, began as a single device in 2007. Currently, it comprises a range of devices, including e-readers with E Ink electronic paper displays and Kindle applications on all major computing platforms. All Kindle devices integrate with Windows and macOS file systems and Kindle Store content and, as of March 2018, the store had over six million e-books available in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Calibre (software)</span> E-book management and editing software

Calibre is a cross-platform free and open-source suite of e-book software. Calibre supports organizing existing e-books into virtual libraries, displaying, editing, creating and converting e-books, as well as syncing e-books with a variety of e-readers. Editing books is supported for EPUB and AZW3 formats. Books in other formats like MOBI must first be converted to those formats, if they are to be edited. Calibre also has a large collection of community contributed plugins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barnes & Noble Nook 1st Edition</span> First generation Nook e-reader developed by Barnes & Noble

The Nook 1st Edition is the first generation of the Nook e-book reader developed by American book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform. The device was announced in the United States in October 2009 and was released the next month. The Nook includes Wi-Fi and AT&T 3G wireless connectivity, a six-inch E Ink display, and a separate, smaller color touchscreen that serves as the primary input device. In June 2010 Barnes & Noble announced a Wi-Fi-only model of the Nook. On June 5, 2018 Barnes and Noble announced support for logging in to BN.com and adding new content to the device will end on June 29, 2018. The second-generation Nook, the Nook Simple Touch, was announced May 25, 2011 with a June 10 release date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marco Arment</span> American software developer and podcaster

Marco Arment is an American iOS developer and web developer, podcaster, technology writer and former magazine editor. As a developer, he is best known for being chief technology officer for Tumblr and creating Instapaper and Overcast.

Springpad was a free online application and web service that allowed its registered users to save, organize and share collected ideas and information. As users added content to their Springpad accounts, the application automatically identified and categorized it, then generated additional snippets based on the types of objects added—for example, listing price comparisons for products and showtimes for movies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinterest</span> American photo sharing and saving website

Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information like recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the internet using images and, on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. Created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, Pinterest, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pocket (service)</span> Social bookmarking service

Pocket, previously known as Read It Later, is a social bookmarking service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. Released in 2007, the service was originally only for desktop and laptop computers and is now available for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Kobo eReaders, and web browsers.

A digital newsstand is a digital distribution platform for downloadable newspapers, magazines and journals. Examples include Apple's Newsstand and Google Play Newsstand – both of which have been discontinued – Amazon Kindle Newsstand and Magzter. It is an online development of the traditional news stand.

Betaworks is an American startup studio and seed stage venture capital company based in New York City that invests in network-focused media businesses.

The Old Reader is a web-based news aggregator that delivers website, blog, and other Internet content to a web-based inbox. The service sprang up when Google removed social features from Google Reader; the site supports social media sharing, including the ability to "like" content, and find friends via social media networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenDyslexic</span> Typeface designed to mitigate reading errors caused by dyslexia

OpenDyslexic is a free typeface/font designed to mitigate some of the common reading errors caused by dyslexia. The typeface was created by Abelardo González, who released it through an open-source license. The design is based on DejaVu Sans, also an open-source font.

This is a timeline of Pinterest, an Internet service that serves as a "visual discovery tool", as well as the eponymous company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kindle Store</span> Online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon

The Kindle Store is an online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon as part of its retail website and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire tablet, or Kindle mobile app. At the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, the store had more than 88,000 digital titles available in the U.S. store. This number increased to more than 275,000 by late 2008 and exceeded 765,000 by August 2011. In July 2014, there were over 2.7 million titles available. As of March 2018, there are over six million titles available in the U.S. Content from the store is purchased online and downloaded using either Wi-Fi or Amazon's Whispernet to bring the content to the user's device. One of the innovations Amazon brought to the store was one-click purchasing which allowed users to quickly purchase an e-book. The Kindle Store uses a recommendation engine that looks at purchase history, browsing history, and reading activity, and then suggests material it thinks the user will like.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overcast (app)</span> Podcast app for iOS developed by Marco Arment

Overcast is a podcast app for iOS that was launched in 2014 by founder and operator Marco Arment. Since its launch, Overcast has received positive reviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Readability (service)</span> Service for cleaning up web pages for reading

Readability was an Internet-based "read it later" service launched in 2009 by Arc90. It ceased its 'bookmarklet' service on September 10, 2016, and discontinued its API service on December 10, 2016. It was similar to competitors Instapaper and Pocket in that it allows a user to save an article from the web and read it later without the clutter of the original website. It started originally as a bookmarklet to remove clutter from webpages and reformat the main article text in a readable font and layout, but following the popularity of the bookmarklet, it evolved to become a service with an app.

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