Instapaper is one of those apps that you really would appreciate in these modern, mobile-centric, fast-paced times – it allows you to store articles for reading, offline and formatted for easy reading. You know, those articles that litter your timeline on your social media platforms, those things that are interesting but you just don’t have enough time to go through at the moment. It used to be that Instapaper – for a fee – allowed you to store those for your downtime reading. An app update now brings Instapaper free, with in-app purchases.
It seems that Instapaper is going the “freemium” path with this new app update that includes text-to-speech, a layout redesign, and user profiles. The text-to-speech allows the app to “read” your stored articles to you when reading is not an option – like when commuting or driving. The layout redesign combines the various in-app feeds into one single feed.
Also, the new updated version introduces user profiles – either public or private. This means that users can share their profiles and if public, other users can see and read the articles you’ve stored within the app. Pretty nifty.
The developers point to the competition – free to download app Pocket, which basically does the same things – as their main inspiration to make the move to the “freemium” market. “When Pocket launched with a great, free product, it became harder to justify a paid product when we had a solid free competitor,” said betaworks General Manager Brian Donohue, which acquired the app in 2013. Tell us in the comments if this is a move that will make you jump over to Instapaper from Pocket. Download it at the source link.
SOURCE: Google Play Store