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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.

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 few months ago. The continuous updates and simpler interface (those thumbnail pics are surprisingly useful) won me over, despite my hesitations about their business model.

abdophoto 13y ago
It absolutely had something to do with it. I don't think anyone would say that Instapaper is 4x better than Pocket ($3.99 vs Free). If anything Pocket has clearly made a name for itself with better design and its new Pocket for Publishers API. I think Instapaper saw its peak about 6 month - 1 year ago and with The Magazine doing well, it was smart of Marco to sell it off in my opinion.
- bonaldi 13y ago
  Instapaper's parsing is 3x better at least. Very often I see Pocket lose chunks of articles over innocuous divs.
  - zw 13y ago
    And I'm often reading those articles in Pocket, which means I never see them at all. Very frustrating.
- 1123581321 13y ago
  I tried Pocket and couldn't get past not having article length indicator, the quick archive/delete menu, favorites, and the Kindle auto-digest. Has the situation improved in any of those areas?
- vasco 13y ago
  3.99$ vs 0$ means it is infinitely better not just 4x times better.
  - umsm 13y ago
    I don't think he was referring to the math involved (even though he wrote it) ;)
  - abdophoto 13y ago
    Yeah absolutely.
elithrar 13y ago
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.
- runjake 13y ago
  You should be questioning how they make money instead. Because if it's free for you, you're probably the thing being sold in that scenario.
- ruswick 13y ago
  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.
- incision 13y ago
  >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.
  - SoftwareMaven 13y ago
    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.
incision 13y ago
Speaking of Pocket, I'm baffled by their lack of (recently upgraded to simply lacking) sharing functionality and full-text search. Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. If the recipient already has an account or goes to the trouble to sign up, they're redirected to their own queue, not the linked article. If the recipient goes to the trouble to sign up and pocket the same page themselves they will end up successfully accessing the getpocket.com/a/read/XXXXXXXXX URL that they were original sent. Pocket is throwing away potential new users who quit at the sign up page and useful information about how existing users share. Within the last month, they finally added some sharing functionality, but it sends links to the original not the pocket version. Another opportunity to pull new users into a test drive of the product being thrown away. Lack of full-text search makes referencing anything down the road incredibly difficult. I've ended up regularly importing my Pocket queue to historious [1] to achieve this. At this point, the only thing that keeps me using Pocket is the very nice Android app. 1: http://historio.us http://historio.us
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  > Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I just tried sharing something from the Pocket Android app and it gave me the original URL in the Gmail message I opened.
  - incision 13y ago
    >I'm not sure what you're talking about. That probably has something to do with failing to read what I wrote. I'm talking about a link to the "read later" view. I even described the original URL functionality you're confusing it with. "Within the last month, they finally added some sharing functionality, but it sends links to the original not the pocket version."
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      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.
micampe 13y ago
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.
- dannowatts 13y ago
  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?
  - micampe 13y ago
    Not well enough.
  - Newky 13y ago
    The thing which irritates me most about this pagination model where you swipe, is that if there is a code reference or something off page, it means u wrestle with this page flipping on/off until you finally are able to drag the page so u can see remainder of code listing.
eliajf 13y ago
The analysis on his part had to be simple. He has two products right now, one of which generates $2.40 one time and then people use it for years. His second product pays him $1.40 per customer every month. The second product is far more stable long term.
benparsons 13y ago
I have no particular loyalty to Instapaper, but their major feature over Pocket, for me, is sending a compilation to kindle as an ebook (Kindle sees it as a magazine, complete with TOC.) People have been asking for this feature from Pocket for a while now (http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/questions/286894-kindle- http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/questions/286894-k...), but without much encouragement that it will appear.
- reefab 13y ago
  Here you go: http://www.crofflr.com/auth/login http://www.crofflr.com/auth/login
- bookwormAT 13y ago
  Here you go: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tchami.kindle&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tchami.kin...
Y0YO 13y ago
I think Instapaper for iPhone is more polished and minimal compared to the new Pocket and that's why I like it. However, the web version is extremely trouble and useless and needs some work. But when someone of my family or friends asked me to what should he use. I always says Pocket, because it is easy and not classy like Instapaper and don't forget the updates too.

abdophoto 13y ago

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.

bonaldi 13y ago
Instapaper's parsing is 3x better at least. Very often I see Pocket lose chunks of articles over innocuous divs.
- zw 13y ago
  And I'm often reading those articles in Pocket, which means I never see them at all. Very frustrating.
1123581321 13y ago
I tried Pocket and couldn't get past not having article length indicator, the quick archive/delete menu, favorites, and the Kindle auto-digest. Has the situation improved in any of those areas?
vasco 13y ago
3.99$ vs 0$ means it is infinitely better not just 4x times better.
- umsm 13y ago
  I don't think he was referring to the math involved (even though he wrote it) ;)
- abdophoto 13y ago
  Yeah absolutely.

elithrar 13y ago

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.

runjake 13y ago
You should be questioning how they make money instead. Because if it's free for you, you're probably the thing being sold in that scenario.
ruswick 13y ago
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.
incision 13y ago
>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.
- SoftwareMaven 13y ago
  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.

incision 13y ago

Speaking of Pocket, I'm baffled by their lack of (recently upgraded to simply lacking) sharing functionality and full-text search. Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. If the recipient already has an account or goes to the trouble to sign up, they're redirected to their own queue, not the linked article. If the recipient goes to the trouble to sign up and pocket the same page themselves they will end up successfully accessing the getpocket.com/a/read/XXXXXXXXX URL that they were original sent. Pocket is throwing away potential new users who quit at the sign up page and useful information about how existing users share. Within the last month, they finally added some sharing functionality, but it sends links to the original not the pocket version. Another opportunity to pull new users into a test drive of the product being thrown away. Lack of full-text search makes referencing anything down the road incredibly difficult. I've ended up regularly importing my Pocket queue to historious [1] to achieve this. At this point, the only thing that keeps me using Pocket is the very nice Android app. 1: http://historio.us http://historio.us

w1ntermute 13y ago
> Passing a Pocket link to someone without a Pocket account leads to a sign-up page. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I just tried sharing something from the Pocket Android app and it gave me the original URL in the Gmail message I opened.
- incision 13y ago
  >I'm not sure what you're talking about. That probably has something to do with failing to read what I wrote. I'm talking about a link to the "read later" view. I even described the original URL functionality you're confusing it with. "Within the last month, they finally added some sharing functionality, but it sends links to the original not the pocket version."
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    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.

micampe 13y ago

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.

dannowatts 13y ago
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?
- micampe 13y ago
  Not well enough.
- Newky 13y ago
  The thing which irritates me most about this pagination model where you swipe, is that if there is a code reference or something off page, it means u wrestle with this page flipping on/off until you finally are able to drag the page so u can see remainder of code listing.

eliajf 13y ago

The analysis on his part had to be simple. He has two products right now, one of which generates $2.40 one time and then people use it for years. His second product pays him $1.40 per customer every month. The second product is far more stable long term.

benparsons 13y ago

I have no particular loyalty to Instapaper, but their major feature over Pocket, for me, is sending a compilation to kindle as an ebook (Kindle sees it as a magazine, complete with TOC.) People have been asking for this feature from Pocket for a while now (http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/questions/286894-kindle- http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/questions/286894-k...), but without much encouragement that it will appear.

reefab 13y ago
Here you go: http://www.crofflr.com/auth/login http://www.crofflr.com/auth/login
bookwormAT 13y ago
Here you go: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tchami.kindle&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tchami.kin...

Y0YO 13y ago

I think Instapaper for iPhone is more polished and minimal compared to the new Pocket and that's why I like it. However, the web version is extremely trouble and useless and needs some work. But when someone of my family or friends asked me to what should he use. I always says Pocket, because it is easy and not classy like Instapaper and don't forget the updates too.