Instapaper Is Now Worthy of Its Creator's Full Attention
Techcrunch talks to Marco Arment, who announced that he'll be leaving Tumblr to devote himself to Instapaper, the internet-to-app reading software. It's hard to understate the value of Instapaper for publishing. It's a simple but vital link between the content world and one's tablet.
Instapaper began as an iPhone app and quickly found its footing on the iPad. The app allows you to install a "read later" tab in your browser that essentially prints articles found on the web to the app where they are formatted for easy e-reading.
Attached to Twitter, Instapaper allows the reader to alight on a story, determine it is worthy of sustained attention during a quiet moment and then move on without losing the flow of one's Twitter stream. Since the same story can come up repeatedly in Twitter, sometimes the choice to "read later" is more of a surrender to brute force. But that's the fun of social reading, too.
Techcrunch wonders how publishers feel about Instapaper hijacking eyeballs away from their precious ads:
Here's Arment's answering Alexia Tsotsis's questions:
"I've worked with many large and small publishers, and nearly all of them love the value that Instapaper provides to their readers. I accommodate any publishers' wishes who would rather not have their content accessible in Instapaper, but to date, almost no publishers have chosen that option. Most see the potential for higher reader engagement, loyalty, and retention rates, and in nearly every case, the people I speak with are happy Instapaper users themselves."The real question about Instapaper isn't whether it disrupts someone else's business model, but whether it has one of its own:
"It's always been a business, it has been profitable every month for the last two years. Constantly improving the product and increasing the customer base have always been primary goals."Amazing. It's a side project. Arment hasn't even maximized the revenue potential of that side project either. Instapaper comes in a free and paid version. The free one is more than adequate for most users and it has become enough of a standard that it is surprising Arment hasn't charged everybody a buck or two just to have the convenience. It's really that good.
"The only change for Instapaper is that I'll now have more time to spend on it," Arment tells TechCrunch, "So far been a side project that I'd throw a few hours at every once in a while."
Since Arment now has time to think about things like business models and expanding the software, he might consider making his baby the backbone of a micro-payments network.
Logic suggests anyone with access to content that is password or paywall protected should be able to use Instapaper to save content for later viewing. But what about being able to get articles from behind a paywall that one doesn't subscribe to? If Instapaper could bill your account a nickel (does anyone know what a nickel is anymore?) for every story that you save from behind a paywall that's closed to you, that could be a big step forward for both the periodicals and Arment's start-up.
Just a thought.