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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

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 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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.
  - fakeer 14y ago
    Even paying apps go for for a sale, less often though. For me Pocket is so seamlessly integrated with my online presence that it will of course to see it go(considering acquisition will kill it or somehow make it unusable - ad etc) but the ease/swiftness makes to very hard to switch to any other service paying or non-paying. One example is their Android focus which, sometimes I funnily think, developers like Marco despise(no, read ignore :P ).
    - eropple 14y ago
      Instapaper's Android app, while not done by Arment himself, is probably the most pleasing non-Google Android app that I've used. He may not care about the platform, but he didn't push a poor Android product.
  - EwanToo 14y ago
    Most paid for apps (though not all) sell exactly the same analytics that free apps do - why turn away an extra revenue stream? Unless the developer has committed to not selling your data, they probably are already doing it.
  - Aissen 14y ago
    Exactly. I had invested time in Spool, and when they got acquired by Facebook, all I got was a bookmark list in a mail attachment and no more service. No readable article, no offline video, etc.
mikec3k 14y ago
I subscribe to Instapaper but I switched to Pocket because I prefer their UI. I keep begging them to take my money.
mtgx 14y ago
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.
- incision 14y ago
  >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. I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.
  - mtgx 14y ago
    And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.
    - incision 14y ago
      >And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. That's a pretty terrible analogy. What I have in Pocket is more than a bunch of bookmarks, it's a local archive of everything I've added. I can read it in a nice flowing text format and benefit from limited search functionality. I can reference anything in there anytime whether I have connectivity or not, whether the source page still exists or not. >Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. Stop projecting your habits and use case onto everyone else.
      - 14y ago

runjake 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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 14y 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.
- fakeer 14y ago
  Even paying apps go for for a sale, less often though. For me Pocket is so seamlessly integrated with my online presence that it will of course to see it go(considering acquisition will kill it or somehow make it unusable - ad etc) but the ease/swiftness makes to very hard to switch to any other service paying or non-paying. One example is their Android focus which, sometimes I funnily think, developers like Marco despise(no, read ignore :P ).
  - eropple 14y ago
    Instapaper's Android app, while not done by Arment himself, is probably the most pleasing non-Google Android app that I've used. He may not care about the platform, but he didn't push a poor Android product.
- EwanToo 14y ago
  Most paid for apps (though not all) sell exactly the same analytics that free apps do - why turn away an extra revenue stream? Unless the developer has committed to not selling your data, they probably are already doing it.
- Aissen 14y ago
  Exactly. I had invested time in Spool, and when they got acquired by Facebook, all I got was a bookmark list in a mail attachment and no more service. No readable article, no offline video, etc.

mikec3k 14y ago

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

mtgx 14y ago

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.

incision 14y ago
>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. I have thousands of items in Pocket going back a year and a half.
- mtgx 14y ago
  And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. But even then you might forget all about it, with all the news coming it.
  - incision 14y ago
    >And I have hundreds of "important" bookmarks in Chrome that I'll probably never check again. That's a pretty terrible analogy. What I have in Pocket is more than a bunch of bookmarks, it's a local archive of everything I've added. I can read it in a nice flowing text format and benefit from limited search functionality. I can reference anything in there anytime whether I have connectivity or not, whether the source page still exists or not. >Let's face it, if you aren't reading it in the first week, you probably never will - except maybe that one article you plan on reading when you're travelling a few weeks from now. Stop projecting your habits and use case onto everyone else.
    - 14y ago