Yeah, I was having a hard time reconciling this: The obvious choice would have been to either limit the API or charge for it. But neither of those are very app

Yeah, I was having a hard time reconciling this: The obvious choice would have been to either limit the API or charge for it. But neither of those are very appealing options to Arment. Limiting the API leads to half-baked, "fragile" apps, as he calls them. Charging developers for API access or taking a cut of their app sales is tricky from a financial perspective, he notes. with the following paragraph: Instead, Arment came up with a smart third way of doing things. Thanks to the subscription test feature Instapaper launched in October of last year, Arment has a way to get paid for API usage -- sort of. You see, the only way users of any service can get access to the Instapaper API is if they’re paying the $1-a-month subscription fee. In other words, Arment has just ensured that he gets directly paid for people hitting his API. And he has just given plenty of users a reason to subscribe. Smart. I suppose he's not charging developers for API access, but charging customers for something isn't something novel. (I love Instapaper, but this article is just weird).