It's about Readability swooping in and kicking Instapaper in the nuts, and Marco's friends stepping in to help a brother out …nothing more. It's not about Readability sending money to publishers. Now, lets get to the real reason behind the negativity. I feel better knowing that I'm helping replace any ad revenue lost due to my scraping of a site's content. It's the sole reason I switched to Readability and became a subscriber. Second, what exactly is the downside of offering publishers a little bit of money versus nothing? It's the equivalent of a tip jar, and in my opinion it's brilliant. If you don't want money from them, you won't get money from them. This is the dumbest thing I've read in a long time. Why? Well, supposedly people are upset with the way Readability collects money on behalf of publishers. I think both apps are great! This post isn't about which app you should use, it's a response to the negativity surrounding Readability's subscription service.Īs soon as Readability hit the App Store there was a flurry of articles and blog posts condemning the service. The fact is, I didn't switch to Readability because I like the app better.
If Readability hadn't come out with a native iOS app, I'd definitely still be using Instapaper today.
I think the service is wonderful, and I think Marco is a cool guy. Free.First, I want to say that I have been an Instapaper user for several years. Your move Microsoft.īut the sad thing is you usually don’t get a second shot at the growth game.
INSTAPAPER VS POCKET VS READABILITY FOR FREE
Remember when Microsoft used to sell licenses to Windows mobile and then Google came along and said ANDROID FOR FREE EVERYBODY?!? Giving away Android for free makes Google money by funneling Android users to Google search and Google services. The key is delivering a valuable service to your users and finding a frictionless way to generate revenue. It’s not about charging users for key features. Lesson: Find a different way to make money. Eventually, they’ll just need to flip the switch. What’s the play there, you might ask? Pocket can easily insert paid recommendations in that tab a la Outbrain and Taboola. All of those “recommended articles” at the bottom of an increasing number of mainstream publications (Slate etc.) are paying Taboola and Outbrain to bring traffic to them. They also recently launched a new tab in the app called “Recommended” articles. And guess what? There’s advertising in it!Īnd guess what. I look through that every week because I find it valuable and interesting. So Pocket has since leapfrogged Instapaper and now has a bajillion email addresses to which they send a weekly digest of popular articles. Especially not by charging for a core feature that a competitor can give away for free. Sure. But not by charging users if you’re in the consumer space. Instapaper’s Google Play Store stats as of today: 5,188 downloadsĪnd then some people will say, “But there has to be a revenue model! Companies are supposed to make money!”
INSTAPAPER VS POCKET VS READABILITY OFFLINE
Ditto mobile apps, offline sync etc.īut their mobile apps are free. Pocket is pretty much exactly like Instapaper except it has a more colorful logo. If you didn’t remember the title of an article and exactly when you saved it, you couldn’t go back and find it unless you paid for a year-long subscription.Įnter Pocket. Instapaper also started charging for its search feature. Existing users were not grandfathered in (I was one of those users). Services like Pocket and Readability were way in the rearview mirror.Ī couple of years ago, Instapaper withdrew its app from the App Store and replaced it with a new one users had to buy for $2.99. Instapaper had competitors, but it was far and away the market leader.
They were the first to make content available offline so you could read in the subway when you couldn’t do much else. They were the first to launch a mobile app that synced your articles across devices, so you could read on your smartphone what you didn’t have time to read on your PC. They were the first to create a browser plugin that saved the article and archived it in one click. Instapaper was super-convenient and innovative. The service saved the article on your web browser, stripped away all the formatting and compiled it in one place for you to read when you actually had the time. About a year and a half ago, Instapaper was the app of choice for saving articles to read later.
0 kommentar(er)
