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Pinterest Acquires Read-It-Later App Instapaper

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instapapericonPopular app Instapaper, designed to allow users to save notable news articles to read at a later time, has been acquired by Pinterest. Created by Marco Arment in 2008, Instapaper was one of the first apps that implemented read-it-later functionality, and it was certainly one of the most widely used and well-known apps in the genre.

Instapaper, available on iOS, Android, Kindle, and the web, was first sold to Betaworks in 2013 and now it belongs to Pinterest. Pinterest plans to use Instapaper to encourage Pinterest users to save more articles to the site, a feature that's existed for several years but isn't often used, and some of Instapaper's search functionality will be integrated into Pinterest. In a blog post, Instapaper said the acquisition would also give it the resources to grow its core mission -- "allowing our users to discover, save, and experience interesting web content."

Instapaper provides a compelling source for news-based content, and we're excited to take those learnings to Pinterest's discovery products. We'll also be experimenting with using our parsing technology for certain Rich Pin types.

Instapaper will continue to operate as a standalone app and service, and no changes are expected for end users. The company will, however, be ending development on Instaparser on November 1, 2016.

Top Rated Comments

124 months ago
Great, more Google search results leading to unviewable Pinterest content. I really wish Google would fix their algorithms to block sites like Pinterest from gaining top search results spots from shared, non-original content. More obnoxious than links to articles behind a paywall.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
thisisnotmyname Avatar
124 months ago
I actively avoid pinterest links now due to the fact that I can't view anyone's pinterest pins without logging in. I have a pinterest account but I just don't like that level of insistence to track behavior. I'll log in to pin things myself but I should be able to scan a list of existing pins without providing my credentials. Insta-paper has a different use case but given the behavior of pinterest I'm not optimistic for their future.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ugahairydawgs Avatar
124 months ago
Well....this doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Fall Under Cerulean Kites Avatar
124 months ago
I use Pocket. Actually, I add things to Pocket. I don’t go back and actually read anythign I added. o_O
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Avieshek Avatar
124 months ago
Used Instapaper, Using Pocket.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
McFreggle Avatar
124 months ago
Used Instapaper, Using Pocket.
+1
Pocket rocks!
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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