Tech Brief: Instapaper is Leaving Pinterest

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.

Comments