Marco Arment:
I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.
Wow.
As a paying Instapaper subscriber, should I be cancelling my next payment? Who’s my money going to now? Digg? Will subscriptions remain the same price? Marco’s post isn’t very clear on this.
Well, normally a change of ownership entitles you to a termination without notice, as you do not have a contract with the new owners.
As this was just announced today, maybe give them a few days to deliver a clarification to us subscribers (they do have our email addresses after all). If they do not provide same in due time, I will cancel my subscription and maybe reinstate it once I know the terms and conditions in the future.
I guess allowing Arment to communicate the deal first, before contacting the subscribers is certainly acceptable.
If tweets by Betaworks, they responded to someone asking about subscriptions, are anything to go by apparently subscriptions won’t be effected.
I just worry how this sale will effect the API that Instapaper provides for third parties. On my Mac I currently use a read it later app to access Instapaper. I hope this app’s ability to access Instapaper won’t be broken down the road.
That’s what getting killed by Pocket will do to you.
Instapaper is not an ongoing subscription. You pay up front and that’s it.
beyond the up-front app cost, there is a subscription fee you can pay to have your saved articles searchable I believe.
I have always loved instapaper and used it, and I hope Marco made some decent cash off it, but this has prompted me to download Pocket and give it a shot. I wonder if Pocket has gotten better as a service, and Marco is just interested in other things now? It is not very fun to maintain code you wrote 5 years ago.
I wonder if the cost of Marco’s brand new BMW M5 is the reason he sold? :^)