After being
acquired by Pinterest in 2016, and going completely
ad-free later that year, read-it-later service and
Pocket rival Instapaper is going back to being independent. The service, originally conceived by popular iOS developer and former Tumblr CTO Marco Arment in 2007, was sold to New York-based VC firm Betaworks (which also owns
Digg) in 2013, before being bought by the social network. Announcing the move in a
new blog post, the company said it has entered into an agreement with Pinterest "to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who've been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013." While exact details of the ownership and reasons for the split still remain unclear, the new-found independence could also mean
restoring service back to E.U. users after it was temporarily shut down for
failing to comply with GDPR back in May.
Update on Aug. 7: Weeks after being spun out of Pinterest, Instapaper has
resumed its service in the European Union, in addition to bringing back
premium features such as full-text search, unlimited notes, text-to-speech playlists, speed reading and more for US$ 2.99 per month.
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