7 ms·

Readability service to become free

154 points by andycroll 15y ago

andycroll 15y ago
Looks like a movement toward being a direct competitor to Instapaper.
- mootymoots 15y ago
  ... and a response to Apple's move into this space
  - willhopkins 15y ago
    Marco doesn't seem to think Apple's service will challenge his business model for Instapaper much. Do you think Readability feels differently?
- grayrest 15y ago
  Kind of surprising to me since the arc90 team worked with Marco for the original platform effort.
- priteau 15y ago
  Unless it changed recently, Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, is an advisor to Arc90, the company behind Readability (http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service)
  - DTSmith 15y ago
    Marco is not currently listed in the advisor team at the bottom of their about page (https://www.readability.com/about https://www.readability.com/about). Would seem like a conflict at this point and makes sense for them to move in separate directions.
- imajes 15y ago
  Doesn't seem incredibly surprising; Marco isn't really innovating effectively, and it's time to see the space build via competition.
  - wmeredith 15y ago
    I beg to differ. Instapaper 3.0 was an amazing step forward for the software.
    - achompas 15y ago
      In what way? I ask bc I agree with parent (and disagree with you), as far as the iPhone version of Instapaper is concerned.
    - rumblestrut 15y ago
      I'll second that. Instapaper 3.0 is incredible. I use Readability and Instapaper for different things. With Readability, I use the Chrome extension to make articles readable in the same way Safari does on the fly. With Instapaper, I save articles and read them later on my iPhone, and I get a collection of articles that I've saved sent automatically to my Kindle every Friday. Saturday mornings with my Kindle, saved articles through Instapaper and French Press coffee? Life is good.
      - john2x 15y ago
        Is Instapaper the only one with the read later offline feature? (versus Safari Reader and Readability)
    - imajes 15y ago
      Personally, I have found that Instapaper 4.0 (I assume this is what you meant when you referred to 3.0) has regressed. Archiving read stories, for example, used to be one click - now it's 2 or 3. Automatic/background downloading fails sometimes, often I see articles unavailable (I don't often remember to check before I leave wifi/signal, so it's a pain to find this out when I expect it to work behind the scenes). Marco's concept of darknet social networking/sharing is great in theory, if he were working for MS Research or something, but in reality, it's confusing and challenging: I want to share stuff with my wife and find it incredibly hard to know if it got there without having to bug her to find out. So we resort to emailing it back and forth - which completely breaks the model. There's no semantic layering on top, exporting to the kindle is tricky (it wont, for example, guess that i've read an article exported to the kindle, and remove it from my list..) I can't have it archive and send stuff to pinboard easily -- and if i want to do anything with the API, i better be prepared to pay a weird licensing fee. As much as I want to support Marco, and I really do, he makes it really hard for me to be enthusiastic about what he ships, and I feel that his support sucks. I'd bet 100$ he's reading this thread, but he won't engage - and that's really striking. I often wonder how things look from his ivory tower.
nc 15y ago
This is better than Instapaper.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  Definitely, NTM Marco's childish anti-Android bias is just stupid. Like it or not, Android has the largest chunk of the smartphone market, and not supporting it out of an ideological bias is absurd. For related reasons, it appears that the Readability app has only been released on iOS at the moment. I have no idea why on earth you would do this, but whatever. As long as they eventually release an Android app, the problem will be solved.
  - avolcano 15y ago
    There is no "anti-Android bias." Marco is one man, and does not want to make and support an Android app in addition to making a web app, iOS app, and the backend to support the two. There is also not a good profit motive for him. Android users, on average, not only use fewer apps, but especially buy fewer apps - very few paid apps on Android are as successful as iOS counterparts. As for Readability, I use the excellent mobile web app. I will check out the iOS app, I suppose, but for Android phones the web app should be fine.
    - fpgeek 15y ago
      I agree that Marco's decision not to develop an Instapaper app for Android doesn't itself reflect an anti-Android bias. There are plenty of good reasons that could be behind that decision. However, if you think Marco himself isn't full of anti-Android bias and contempt, you haven't been paying attention. Check out his Twitter feed. Or his blog. Aaron Pressman at The Orange View has captured more than a few examples (as have others, I'm sure). Marco likes to talk about how he hasn't seen a good Instapaper Android app and how that "proves" there's no market for him on Android (conveniently dismissing the official ReadItLater app, not to mention the pile of apps using the ReadItLater API that preceded it). Personally, I think there's a much simpler explanation: Any developer working on an Instapaper Android app couldn't help coming across Marco's opinions on Android. At that point, I'd expect most good Android developers would decide that they had better things to do than to writing an app for a platform their API provider hates.
pfui 15y ago
would be nice if they provided readability as a library or a documented API for third-parties.
- inportb 15y ago
  it is indeed available as a library. with multiple ports, no less.
- kenneth_reitz 15y ago
  We do! http://www.readability.com/publishers/api http://www.readability.com/publishers/api We also offer a Content API for getting the content of articles. Send us an email for more info.
  - wslh 15y ago
    Is the API now free?
    - kenneth_reitz 15y ago
      Yes — as always :)
arpit 15y ago
Free service and free apps? Whats the business model?
- berberich 15y ago
  I'm wondering the same thing. Their original business model of splitting revenue with the authors was interesting, but I'm guessing they didn't get many subsribers. I was interested in supporting them, but because I already support Marco @ Instapaper with a monthly donation, the Readability subscription (was it $5 or $7 per month) wasn't worth it for myself.
  - stdbrouw 15y ago
    It's still their business model, they've had a free version and a premium version (w/ the revenue split) for quite a while now, and it doesn't seem like this announcement changes that. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the big change is that the apps are now free too, or maybe that some premium features have become available to everyone.
    - kenneth_reitz 15y ago
      Correct, that is still the business model. You couldn't have an account at all without paying before. Now, you can sign up for an account for free. With that includes a 30-article Reading List, (optionally) public profile, and access to the apps (device syncing, &c). Premium users also get Archives, an Unlimited Reading List (mine has 1000+ articles in it), daily Kindle digests, and —of course— the warn fuzzy feeling of supporting the writers that create the content you enjoy. The list is likely to grow in the future.
- achompas 15y ago
  Freemium. See the home page, where they talk about "Premium" subscribers.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
gizzlon 15y ago
I like readability and their idea that profit should go back to the publisher. But they never really tell you how this is suppose to work. As far as I can tell, each publisher has to register with readability to see any money. Clearly not "web scale" :)
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  Actually, most bigger publishers and quite a few bloggers are already signed up with Readability, because it's just set-and-forget. Also: "Yes, Readability keeps track of the last twelve months of pages visited even before a publisher registers with us to view their statistics. If your site has garnered traffic to Readability, we're already earmarking money for you."
  - gizzlon 15y ago
    Cool, but how do you know who signed up?
- bproper 15y ago
  Ironically, the parser developed by Readability under the Apache license is now used by Apple and Amazon. So the technology has gone web scale, even if the business hasn't... http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-free-aiming-to-enlarge-its-platform/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-fr...
abrowne 15y ago
I keep bouncing between Readability and Readable[1]. One thing I like about Readability is that it's not affected by saved zoom levels because it displays the converted page on its own domain. For example, if I have BBC News at 120% zoom – remembered by Chrome – Readability is still at 100% – or whatever I've set it to – whereas Readable uses 120% zoom. [1]: http://readable.tastefulwords.com/ http://readable.tastefulwords.com/
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- gala8y 15y ago
  I've been using Readability legacy bookmarklet, but was never happy being redirected to their domain. Thanks for link to Readable.
  - abrowne 15y ago
    On Chrome there's also the Readability Redux extension[1], which uses the old bookmarklet's code with a toolbar button. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaacmfoipeehedigia https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaac...
tel 15y ago
I can't consider leaving Instapaper until Readability sends things to my Kindle weekly. Without that feature I'm unlikely to bookmark in Readability but quite likely to using Instapaper. I don't see how it can be done with the paywall they've set up, though.
- kenneth_reitz 15y ago
  We can send things to your Kindle daily.
  - tel 15y ago
    Indeed you can :) Anecdotally, I didn't notice that capacity until you mentioned it here, though.
Torn 15y ago
For a site named 'readability', the font they're using seems awfully thin and spidery. I need to selecting the text to comfortably read it, and my eyesight isn't bad. Is it just me, or are anti-aliased web fonts these days harder to read than their normal equivalents?
bproper 15y ago
Unlike Marco Arment and Instapaper, Readability will now give their app away for free. Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their business model. But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in licensing fees to this small startup. He talks about it here - http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-free-aiming-to-enlarge-its-platform/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-fr... Readabilities dream of a long form "slow" web that rewards publishers is noble, but they would be better equipped to build it if they had secured their business model early on.
- naner 15y ago
  Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their business model. That sounds ominous. But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in licensing fees to this small startup. Yup. That is what the Apache license is for. I'm a huge fan of open source but when you choose a license like that you should prepare yourself for the possibility that most people will use your code in the most unhelpful and exploitative way possible. I'm using something called "Enjoy Reading" for Firefox (which also uses readability's code) since I'd rather have the formatting all happen in javascript without trying to access a remote server. It's quicker and I don't have to worry about whether or not they are logging every article I read.
  - kenneth_reitz 15y ago
    The parser we're using now is not based on that JavaScript codebase at all. It's excellent to it being used in so many ways now, though. We're all about making reading better on the web.
    - grayrest 15y ago
      Are you using the lxml port or did you guys rewrite it again?
sjs 15y ago
I already have and use Instapaper. What reasons are there to start using Readability instead?
level09 15y ago
Apple is already killing these 3rd party services (readability,instapaper etc ..) they have a readability button in their latest safari for ios5 alongside with a reading list. hence the decision the make it free .. iMessage was another attempt to kill whats app, I won't be surprised if instagram is next.
- kenneth_reitz 15y ago
  Not at all. Apple's service is useful, but it's only an aggregated list of your own links to read. Open one on iOS, and it opens the full webpage. Far from ideal. It's excellent to see them contributing to online reading, though. The 'Reader' Safari feature is based on our code, actually! (we're in the license page).
- Raphael 15y ago
  Plenty of people who don't use Safari.
- mitjak 15y ago
  There is no way to view your links outside of the Apple's browsers, it automatically archives links you click on even once, even if just to peak, and it's entirely locked to the Mac and iOS devices. For the target audience the feature was designed for (clearly not my mom), it falls short in many ways. I don't think anything's killing anything quite yet.
lowglow 15y ago
I developed this exact same tech earlier this year. It was a pain trying to analyze all the MANY different ways people can screw up html, but the success rate is pretty high across the net. I've been thinking of making it opensource since I no longer use it.
- donohoe 15y ago
  Please do.
kleiba 15y ago
I wish there was a browser plugin that makes every web page appear as if run through Readability/Readable by default. Of course, it would be nice if it was really snappy, too.
andrewfelix 15y ago
Much of web would be so much more pleasant if article based sites were formatted from the get go like they are in Readability. I would gladly put up with one or two ads and they would more likely get my attention.

154 points by andycroll 15y ago

andycroll 15y ago

Looks like a movement toward being a direct competitor to Instapaper.

mootymoots 15y ago
... and a response to Apple's move into this space
- willhopkins 15y ago
  Marco doesn't seem to think Apple's service will challenge his business model for Instapaper much. Do you think Readability feels differently?
grayrest 15y ago
Kind of surprising to me since the arc90 team worked with Marco for the original platform effort.
priteau 15y ago
Unless it changed recently, Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, is an advisor to Arc90, the company behind Readability (http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service)
- DTSmith 15y ago
  Marco is not currently listed in the advisor team at the bottom of their about page (https://www.readability.com/about https://www.readability.com/about). Would seem like a conflict at this point and makes sense for them to move in separate directions.
imajes 15y ago
Doesn't seem incredibly surprising; Marco isn't really innovating effectively, and it's time to see the space build via competition.
- wmeredith 15y ago
  I beg to differ. Instapaper 3.0 was an amazing step forward for the software.
  - achompas 15y ago
    In what way? I ask bc I agree with parent (and disagree with you), as far as the iPhone version of Instapaper is concerned.
  - rumblestrut 15y ago
    I'll second that. Instapaper 3.0 is incredible. I use Readability and Instapaper for different things. With Readability, I use the Chrome extension to make articles readable in the same way Safari does on the fly. With Instapaper, I save articles and read them later on my iPhone, and I get a collection of articles that I've saved sent automatically to my Kindle every Friday. Saturday mornings with my Kindle, saved articles through Instapaper and French Press coffee? Life is good.
    - john2x 15y ago
      Is Instapaper the only one with the read later offline feature? (versus Safari Reader and Readability)
  - imajes 15y ago
    Personally, I have found that Instapaper 4.0 (I assume this is what you meant when you referred to 3.0) has regressed. Archiving read stories, for example, used to be one click - now it's 2 or 3. Automatic/background downloading fails sometimes, often I see articles unavailable (I don't often remember to check before I leave wifi/signal, so it's a pain to find this out when I expect it to work behind the scenes). Marco's concept of darknet social networking/sharing is great in theory, if he were working for MS Research or something, but in reality, it's confusing and challenging: I want to share stuff with my wife and find it incredibly hard to know if it got there without having to bug her to find out. So we resort to emailing it back and forth - which completely breaks the model. There's no semantic layering on top, exporting to the kindle is tricky (it wont, for example, guess that i've read an article exported to the kindle, and remove it from my list..) I can't have it archive and send stuff to pinboard easily -- and if i want to do anything with the API, i better be prepared to pay a weird licensing fee. As much as I want to support Marco, and I really do, he makes it really hard for me to be enthusiastic about what he ships, and I feel that his support sucks. I'd bet 100$ he's reading this thread, but he won't engage - and that's really striking. I often wonder how things look from his ivory tower.

nc 15y ago

This is better than Instapaper.

w1ntermute 15y ago
Definitely, NTM Marco's childish anti-Android bias is just stupid. Like it or not, Android has the largest chunk of the smartphone market, and not supporting it out of an ideological bias is absurd. For related reasons, it appears that the Readability app has only been released on iOS at the moment. I have no idea why on earth you would do this, but whatever. As long as they eventually release an Android app, the problem will be solved.
- avolcano 15y ago
  There is no "anti-Android bias." Marco is one man, and does not want to make and support an Android app in addition to making a web app, iOS app, and the backend to support the two. There is also not a good profit motive for him. Android users, on average, not only use fewer apps, but especially buy fewer apps - very few paid apps on Android are as successful as iOS counterparts. As for Readability, I use the excellent mobile web app. I will check out the iOS app, I suppose, but for Android phones the web app should be fine.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    I agree that Marco's decision not to develop an Instapaper app for Android doesn't itself reflect an anti-Android bias. There are plenty of good reasons that could be behind that decision. However, if you think Marco himself isn't full of anti-Android bias and contempt, you haven't been paying attention. Check out his Twitter feed. Or his blog. Aaron Pressman at The Orange View has captured more than a few examples (as have others, I'm sure). Marco likes to talk about how he hasn't seen a good Instapaper Android app and how that "proves" there's no market for him on Android (conveniently dismissing the official ReadItLater app, not to mention the pile of apps using the ReadItLater API that preceded it). Personally, I think there's a much simpler explanation: Any developer working on an Instapaper Android app couldn't help coming across Marco's opinions on Android. At that point, I'd expect most good Android developers would decide that they had better things to do than to writing an app for a platform their API provider hates.

pfui 15y ago

would be nice if they provided readability as a library or a documented API for third-parties.

inportb 15y ago
it is indeed available as a library. with multiple ports, no less.
kenneth_reitz 15y ago
We do! http://www.readability.com/publishers/api http://www.readability.com/publishers/api We also offer a Content API for getting the content of articles. Send us an email for more info.
- wslh 15y ago
  Is the API now free?
  - kenneth_reitz 15y ago
    Yes — as always :)

arpit 15y ago

Free service and free apps? Whats the business model?

berberich 15y ago
I'm wondering the same thing. Their original business model of splitting revenue with the authors was interesting, but I'm guessing they didn't get many subsribers. I was interested in supporting them, but because I already support Marco @ Instapaper with a monthly donation, the Readability subscription (was it $5 or $7 per month) wasn't worth it for myself.
- stdbrouw 15y ago
  It's still their business model, they've had a free version and a premium version (w/ the revenue split) for quite a while now, and it doesn't seem like this announcement changes that. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the big change is that the apps are now free too, or maybe that some premium features have become available to everyone.
  - kenneth_reitz 15y ago
    Correct, that is still the business model. You couldn't have an account at all without paying before. Now, you can sign up for an account for free. With that includes a 30-article Reading List, (optionally) public profile, and access to the apps (device syncing, &c). Premium users also get Archives, an Unlimited Reading List (mine has 1000+ articles in it), daily Kindle digests, and —of course— the warn fuzzy feeling of supporting the writers that create the content you enjoy. The list is likely to grow in the future.
achompas 15y ago
Freemium. See the home page, where they talk about "Premium" subscribers.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

gizzlon 15y ago

I like readability and their idea that profit should go back to the publisher. But they never really tell you how this is suppose to work. As far as I can tell, each publisher has to register with readability to see any money. Clearly not "web scale" :)

stdbrouw 15y ago
Actually, most bigger publishers and quite a few bloggers are already signed up with Readability, because it's just set-and-forget. Also: "Yes, Readability keeps track of the last twelve months of pages visited even before a publisher registers with us to view their statistics. If your site has garnered traffic to Readability, we're already earmarking money for you."
- gizzlon 15y ago
  Cool, but how do you know who signed up?
bproper 15y ago
Ironically, the parser developed by Readability under the Apache license is now used by Apple and Amazon. So the technology has gone web scale, even if the business hasn't... http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-free-aiming-to-enlarge-its-platform/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-fr...

abrowne 15y ago

I keep bouncing between Readability and Readable[1]. One thing I like about Readability is that it's not affected by saved zoom levels because it displays the converted page on its own domain. For example, if I have BBC News at 120% zoom – remembered by Chrome – Readability is still at 100% – or whatever I've set it to – whereas Readable uses 120% zoom. [1]: http://readable.tastefulwords.com/ http://readable.tastefulwords.com/

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
gala8y 15y ago
I've been using Readability legacy bookmarklet, but was never happy being redirected to their domain. Thanks for link to Readable.
- abrowne 15y ago
  On Chrome there's also the Readability Redux extension[1], which uses the old bookmarklet's code with a toolbar button. [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaacmfoipeehedigia https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaac...

tel 15y ago

I can't consider leaving Instapaper until Readability sends things to my Kindle weekly. Without that feature I'm unlikely to bookmark in Readability but quite likely to using Instapaper. I don't see how it can be done with the paywall they've set up, though.

kenneth_reitz 15y ago
We can send things to your Kindle daily.
- tel 15y ago
  Indeed you can :) Anecdotally, I didn't notice that capacity until you mentioned it here, though.

Torn 15y ago

For a site named 'readability', the font they're using seems awfully thin and spidery. I need to selecting the text to comfortably read it, and my eyesight isn't bad. Is it just me, or are anti-aliased web fonts these days harder to read than their normal equivalents?

bproper 15y ago

Unlike Marco Arment and Instapaper, Readability will now give their app away for free. Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their business model. But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in licensing fees to this small startup. He talks about it here - http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-free-aiming-to-enlarge-its-platform/ http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-fr... Readabilities dream of a long form "slow" web that rewards publishers is noble, but they would be better equipped to build it if they had secured their business model early on.

naner 15y ago
Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their business model. That sounds ominous. But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in licensing fees to this small startup. Yup. That is what the Apache license is for. I'm a huge fan of open source but when you choose a license like that you should prepare yourself for the possibility that most people will use your code in the most unhelpful and exploitative way possible. I'm using something called "Enjoy Reading" for Firefox (which also uses readability's code) since I'd rather have the formatting all happen in javascript without trying to access a remote server. It's quicker and I don't have to worry about whether or not they are logging every article I read.
- kenneth_reitz 15y ago
  The parser we're using now is not based on that JavaScript codebase at all. It's excellent to it being used in so many ways now, though. We're all about making reading better on the web.
  - grayrest 15y ago
    Are you using the lxml port or did you guys rewrite it again?

sjs 15y ago

I already have and use Instapaper. What reasons are there to start using Readability instead?

level09 15y ago

Apple is already killing these 3rd party services (readability,instapaper etc ..) they have a readability button in their latest safari for ios5 alongside with a reading list. hence the decision the make it free .. iMessage was another attempt to kill whats app, I won't be surprised if instagram is next.

kenneth_reitz 15y ago
Not at all. Apple's service is useful, but it's only an aggregated list of your own links to read. Open one on iOS, and it opens the full webpage. Far from ideal. It's excellent to see them contributing to online reading, though. The 'Reader' Safari feature is based on our code, actually! (we're in the license page).
Raphael 15y ago
Plenty of people who don't use Safari.
mitjak 15y ago
There is no way to view your links outside of the Apple's browsers, it automatically archives links you click on even once, even if just to peak, and it's entirely locked to the Mac and iOS devices. For the target audience the feature was designed for (clearly not my mom), it falls short in many ways. I don't think anything's killing anything quite yet.

lowglow 15y ago

I developed this exact same tech earlier this year. It was a pain trying to analyze all the MANY different ways people can screw up html, but the success rate is pretty high across the net. I've been thinking of making it opensource since I no longer use it.

donohoe 15y ago
Please do.

kleiba 15y ago

I wish there was a browser plugin that makes every web page appear as if run through Readability/Readable by default. Of course, it would be nice if it was really snappy, too.

andrewfelix 15y ago

Much of web would be so much more pleasant if article based sites were formatted from the get go like they are in Readability. I would gladly put up with one or two ads and they would more likely get my attention.