Instapaper

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 and by mid 2016 Pinterest acquired the company. 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.[2][3]

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,[4]

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.[18]

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.[12]

iOS

Instapaper's free iPhone app (removed from the App Store on March 12, 2011[19]) with offline reading was one of the first apps in the App Store on July 12, 2008.[20] 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.[21]

On March 10, 2011, with the launch of the 3.0 app, Instapaper added social sharing and browsing features.[22] Later in 2011, the redesigned 4.0 app added full-text search of all saved articles for customers with the optional $1/month subscription.[23]

The Instapaper iPad app launched with the iPad itself on April 3, 2010.[24][25]

Android

The Instapaper for Android was built by development shop Mobelux[26] in 2012 and supports Android phones and tablets.

Kindle

An automatic send-to-Kindle feature was added on March 8, 2009.[27] The Kindle feature alone is used by over 60,000 Kindle owners as of late 2011.[28] 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.[29]

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.[30] 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.[31] 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.

screenshot	Instapaper web reader example.png
url	https://www.instapaper.com
commercial	Yes
type	Online bookmarking, saving articles for later reading
registration	Yes
owner	Instant Paper, Inc. (previously Pinterest)
author	Marco Arment
launch date	January 28, 2008
current status	Active
programming language	Python

History

Features

iOS

Android

Kindle

The Feature

Competitors and similar services

See also

External links

References