Instapaper Goes From Hobby To Startup

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/instapaper-goes-from-hobby-to-startup/

by pathik • 16 years ago

132 40 16 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

A bit of a sensationalist headline: I wouldn't consider this a startup, as no actual changes have been made yet, besides availability of time.

Though I am extremely excited to see what Marco has to offer the world now that he can devote more than 10 hours a week.

jasonjei• 16 years ago

I kinda had a hunch he would be doing this. As it stands right now, Instapaper has a greater chance of making more money than Tumblr, simply because they are selling iOS apps already and the datamining potential is greater (with Tumblr, how do you analyze different blog posts and so on?), such as finding out which blogs are most popular.

cake2• 16 years ago

They alredy extract the most popular posts http://www.tumblr.com/popular/top

I'm sure they have no problems to know which blog is the most popular (page views, number of "reblogs"...)

grinich• 16 years ago

The product has been out for nearly 3 years[1] and he's been making money for at least half of that.

I'm curious why you don't consider that a startup. What's your criterion?

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/simple-bookmarking-now-avai...

sahillavingia2• 16 years ago

I meant, the title says from a hobby to a startup but I believe it's always been both (it didn't just become a startup, it always has been in a sense). Sorry, maybe my wording was off.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

It's nice to see Marco Arment pursuing another fine example of the Patio11-esque approach of building a minimum viable product in his spare time, gradually improving and expanding it while keeping the day job, growing his userbase, and then smoothly transitioning into making it a full-time gig, all without talk of crazy hours, scrambling for investors, or even subsistence on ramen.

Obviously this doesn't work for every kind of startup, but it's great to see it working where it can.

Psyonic• 16 years ago

Don't compare him to Patrick or he'll be next on lionhearted's chopping block!

agent86a• 16 years ago

I've been using and loving instapaper for a few months now. It's really helped me not get distracted spending 20 minutes reading an article when I find something interesting.

Also: the ability to grab an up to date mobi file remotely from my kindle is fantastic. For anyone with an ereader, instapaper is the easiest way I've found to get articles on the web well formatted for reading.

Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!

WarDekar• 16 years ago

I should probably submit this to him (and I shall now), but my chief complaint with Instapaper is that on split-page articles it doesn't automatically combine them into one. Some sites (namely WashPo comes to mind off the top of my head) won't let you single page articles, so it makes it a pain to use Instapaper on those.

Hopefully with more time on his hands he'll be able to add more features like this.

EDIT: Looks like he already has this requested since it's listed on the FAQ page, so I look forward to seeing this functionality soon!

DannoHung• 16 years ago

Heck, I'd be pretty happy with a little button/dropdown in the popup that let me say which article the page is a part of.

danielhfrank• 16 years ago

How does this stack up against Read It Later? Anybody tried both of them? They sound identical

kroger• 16 years ago

I never used Read It Later, but instapaper can also save kindle and epub files. Even if I have a pro instapaper iphone app, I mainly use it on the kindle these days.

mynegation• 16 years ago

I use both and Instapaper does much nicer job of reformatting HTML into something readable. Most of the time it is a blessing, but sometimes it may be the curse (e.g. you have colored table with critical information).

mcepl• 16 years ago

Because it is much more than that ... combines Read It Later, with Readability (Firefox add-on), and ability to download ePub to my N-900 (so it works virtually everywhere, not only on iP*). Also, there is no cost of using it ... if it goes away (or requires payment), I don't loose anything than one day worth of reading.

darushimo• 16 years ago

go marco!

StavrosK8• 16 years ago

Does anyone know how he promoted it? I'm having a bit of trouble with my startup (historious), in that I don't know how I should go about promoting it...

adambyrtek• 16 years ago

Tadam, you've just promoted it! I googled and took a quick look at it, but I'm curious how different is it from a bunch of other already entrenched bookmarking sites?

StavrosK8• 16 years ago

That's my biggest problem (getting people to understand the awesomeness). I've used other sites, but this is the only truly zero-cost bookmarking service (I'm referring to mental cost). When the mental cost for bookmarking is removed, you find that you bookmark anything that looks remotely interesting and then you can find it very very easily.

Other services have the burden that I either have to fill out too much stuff when bookmarking (tags, categories etc), and/or that I have to categorise my bookmarks. This adds the pages you bookmark to the index right away, so bookmarking is single-click and then you have your personal search engine.

Try it, it's really great. My problem, however, is that I can't find a good way to tell people about it without spamming it, and I was wondering how people approached this problem for Instapaper, which is a not entirely different service...

photon_off4• 16 years ago

I'm in the same general space as you (bookmarking / browsing tools), and I have some insight.

I think Instapaper gets a lot of word of mouth spreading because it's an iPhone App. That encompasses a lot more than it sounds. Being an iWhatever App means you get eyeballs from the store, but more importantly from its users - both online and in real life. iPhone/Pad/etc applications are highly sociable and shareable; revealing a useful App to somebody is a form of social value. It's a platform that is in vogue right now: How many times have you been recommended a certain App, or have seen somebody using an interesting one? Ok, now how many times have you been recommended a bookmarklet?

You were blogged a few times, that should have helped somewhat. It's possible that Historious isn't as useful as you think it is. I had written in this box a big long paragraph about why I think that is, but it's not pertinent to your question about promotion. If you'd like more of my thoughts on Historious, shoot me an e-mail, I'd be glad to give you my $.02.

There was also a post around here that detailed a template and methodology for 'pitching' an article about your product to bloggers. The gist of it was: You need to be actively seeking bloggers and promoters, you need to show them you're interested in their work, and you need to pitch them your product in a way that makes them feel their readers will click to read about it.

StavrosK8• 16 years ago

I see, thanks for your feedback. Could you email me at support at historio dot us, as I don't have your email?

Thanks again!

pclark• 16 years ago

I think Instapaper launched on Daringfireball.

StavrosK8• 16 years ago

There's more than that, though, you need something to sustain you, you can't get by on the initial launch... There was a bit of coverage for historious which was great, but now there's a lull and I don't know what to do to tell people about the service effectively...

statictype• 16 years ago

I heard of Instapaper from Daring Fireball.

I guess making something that hits the sweet spot for a famous blogger is one way to promote. May not be the most efficient though.

greyman• 16 years ago

Hello, I tried historious just now and indeed, it seems a good product. I think you have to find some compelling reason, why one would switch to your service from others. Also, a big improvement would be, if one can try your service without the need of registering - like the Instapaper. I must say that generally I simply don't have a motivation to try another bookmarking service just to see what it is. But I did a very short evaluation just now to help a fellow HN'er ;-)

Ok, so why I won't probably switch to your service? ;-)

Currently, I use two bookmarking sites:

- Instapaper - this is for the stuff I want to read later, but not necessarily "bookmark" it, and

- Google bookmarks - for the stuff I might want later, so I want to bookmark it

Now, as I see it, the only advantage of historius over Google bookmarks is, that I can historify by one click (like Instapaper). But, this is not that important to me, since when I want to store something, my current habit already is that I always want to add a tag anyway. Because, despite Google bookmarks also having a search (in bookmarked sites), I almost never use it - I can recall an old bookmark by the tag more easily. Moreover, another advantage is, that I do not need another account to create, since I am also an Gmail user.

The third thing is, that I probably would not pay for bookmarking service monthly/yearly, when there is so much free offerings. Maybe you could convince me to one-time fee (like pinboard.in does), but probably not regularly.

So, to sum it up, your product combines good things from various other bookmarking services, but that alone doesn't make it better than others. You just need to find people, who like the workflow you are offering them with your service.

So to sum it up, my only advice I can give is - try to make your service available without need to register, so more people will try it.

StavrosK8• 16 years ago

Thank you for your feedback! It's true that it's similar to those two services, but, in my opinion, it's different enough to have its own space.

As for registration, don't you need to specify a username when you use instapaper? The problem with using historious without an account is that some features won't work, plus you won't be able to access your account from a different machine/browser. Many users have requested it, though, so I'll try and make it happen!

Thanks again!

docgnome• 16 years ago

The thing that has always made me hesitant to use Instapaper and services like it (in particular the ability to read stuff on an e-ink reader later) is for me a major part of the value of most of what I read, is the comments on HN. When you move the content to a reader device, you lose that. Has anyone though of a solution to this other than read the article and then hop on HN and try to find it?

glhaynes• 16 years ago

I personally find that there's nearly no overlap between articles with comments (at least those which I'm interested in) and those I read on Instapaper. Think that's because I don't tend to put short "news" items on Instapaper, just long form articles.

duck2• 16 years ago

I find the opposite true - for me it seems like HN is a great way to find those longer, more detailed, articles that I use Instapaper for all the time.

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

You could always put the comments page on Instapaper instead.

omaranto• 16 years ago

I haven't tried that recently, but the Instapaper text extractor didn't use to parse HN comment pages at all.

duck2• 16 years ago

Is the only revenue stream for Instapaper the app you can buy?

cake2• 16 years ago

Ads on the website too I guess.

anarchitect• 16 years ago

Sometimes I wonder what my iPad can do that I can't do better on my laptop. The answer, always, is reading articles Instapaper.

That is if I can manage to wrestle it away from my girlfriend playing Plants vs Zombies!

Instapaper Goes From Hobby To Startup

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