![]() Betaworks owns a significant though undisclosed portion of several of these companies, including bitly, Tumblr, and UserVoice. It also provides startup-style resources in its offices for companies until they reach sufficient scale. (The subscription also offers additional features, such as searching and removing ads.)īetaworks is a venture-capital firm that has invested in a remarkable range of interesting companies - including Kickstarter, Pinterest, and Twitter. Instapaper also makes its service available to third-party apps, although users of those apps must have an otherwise optional $1-per-month subscription via the Instapaper Web site. After purchasing one of the Instapaper apps, there are no additional fees to access all the features of the service. Instapaper started as a Web app iOS and Android versions followed, generating most of the product’s revenue. ![]() Many Web sites then had neither optimized their main pages for mobile viewing nor developed mobile versions, thus forcing iPhone users to download bandwidth-sucking pages that were often hard to read on the small screen. Instapaper arrived at a neat juncture: the iPhone was a year old, cellular data networks were widespread but often suffered from spotty coverage (especially on public transportation), and long-form journalism was on the rise. Instapaper has several competitors, notably Pocket (formerly Read It Later) and Readability. He eventually left Tumblr to turn Instapaper into a full-time business. In January 2008, he made Instapaper available to anyone to use, and was overwhelmed by the response. Instapaper’s owner and developer, Marco Arment, said in a blog post that he had sold a majority interest in the product to Betaworks, an investment firm and incubator that owns Digg and bitly.Īrment developed Instapaper for his own use while he worked at Tumblr, a blog-hosting company, and then opened it up to friends and colleagues. The five-year-old Instapaper service for storing Web articles that you want to read later has been taken over by Betaworks. #1645: AirPlay iPhone to Mac for remote video, Siri learns to restart iPhones, Apple's Q1 2023 financials.1646: Security-focused OS updates, Photos Workbench review, Mastodon client wishlist, Apple-related conferences.1647: Focus-caused notification issues, site-specific browser examples, virtualizing Windows on M-series Macs.#1648: iPhone passcode thefts, Center Cam improves webcam eye contact, APFS Uncertainty Principle.#1649: More LastPass breach details and 1Password switch, macOS screen saver problem, tvOS 16.3.3 fixes Siri Remote bug.*This sentence has been updated to clarify that Arment sold a majority stake in Instapaper, as opposed to selling it outright. Readers, rejoice: There are now two deep-pocketed companies battling to bring you the best time-shifting service on the Web. But the competition can only be good for consumers in the long run. That infuriates Arment, who has said he will continue to advise BetaWorks on Instapaper’s development. Pocket, for its part, is already fighting back, inviting Instapaper users to import their information and make the switch today. This sounds like a win for everyone involved-except, perhaps, for Pocket, which can expect to face a much more formidable competitor in the months and years to come. It didn’t take much convincing, because we both knew it was a great fit. I jumped out of bed, tiptoed downstairs (no parent wants to wake a sleeping baby), and sent an email. In his blog post, he wote:Ī couple of months ago, at 1:30 AM, I suddenly realized who should take it over. If BetaWorks sounds like an ideal landing place for Instapaper, there’s a good reason for that: Arment hand-picked the company to acquire his baby.
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