I'm one of the founders. Thanks for your feedback.
The business model on this is pretty clear. It works like DropBox. Most users are casual users and cost us almost nothing. Heavy users have a clear pain point and will pay for it. Our alpha users have expressed this to us. The hard part with a model like this is, of course, figuring out the right cut-off for a free account which is why we want to see how users use it before imposing any restrictions.
Let us know if you have any thoughts. You can email me directly at [email protected] if you want to share anything in private too.
"The app is free for now (in private beta), while the founders consider monetization options involving freemium services, search offerings and mobile CDN models."
Can you blame them for being free while in beta?
Also remember that Instapaper was a free web app before it was an iOS app, and that Instapaper Free for iOS existed as recently as early 2011. It didn't seem to hurt Marco's sales.
You seem to have a lot of negativity - what's wrong with starting free to get a foot in the market? Also, being "on steroids" is and has always been a good thing. They also say that it's an "evolved" version of Instapaper.
This is why I think it was shortsighted for Instapaper to reject outside funding. As much as I like Instapaper, it is very much still a single-platform app with very limited scope (text-only), and the app hasn't been updated in several months. Meanwhile its competitors (like Readitlater and now these guys) are getting funded, rolling out features, and attacking this market with much greater resources.
Marco has actually stated that he has 4.0 pretty much ready to ship as soon as iOS 5 comes out. However due to being built against the 5.0 SDK he can't release it any earlier than that.
Just watched their demo on TC disrupt and it looks wonderful. I've been really into the content scrubbing systems that have been coming out as of late. This reminded me a lot of my current favorite, Gimme Bar (http://www.gimmebar.com), but much smoother of an experience. Signed up for the beta. You should too.
We're hoping to build a large, successful business. There is a lot of technology behind this that is a legitimate barrier to entry so we don't expect this will be copied in any meaningful way soon. We'll be writing blog posts to explain details of why what we've built is so difficult to copy in the coming weeks.
[+] [-] martingordon|14 years ago|reply
Yes, this always ends well. Every download Spool gets loses them money. For every download Instapaper gets, Marco makes money.
And yes, Spool may be more feature rich than Instapaper, but when is being "on steroids" a good thing?
[+] [-] avichal|14 years ago|reply
I'm one of the founders. Thanks for your feedback.
The business model on this is pretty clear. It works like DropBox. Most users are casual users and cost us almost nothing. Heavy users have a clear pain point and will pay for it. Our alpha users have expressed this to us. The hard part with a model like this is, of course, figuring out the right cut-off for a free account which is why we want to see how users use it before imposing any restrictions.
Let us know if you have any thoughts. You can email me directly at [email protected] if you want to share anything in private too.
Thanks, Avichal
[+] [-] achompas|14 years ago|reply
"The app is free for now (in private beta), while the founders consider monetization options involving freemium services, search offerings and mobile CDN models."
Can you blame them for being free while in beta?
Also remember that Instapaper was a free web app before it was an iOS app, and that Instapaper Free for iOS existed as recently as early 2011. It didn't seem to hurt Marco's sales.
[+] [-] watty|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _frog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quinndupont|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rglover|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashrust|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avichal|14 years ago|reply
We're hoping to build a large, successful business. There is a lot of technology behind this that is a legitimate barrier to entry so we don't expect this will be copied in any meaningful way soon. We'll be writing blog posts to explain details of why what we've built is so difficult to copy in the coming weeks.
[+] [-] achompas|14 years ago|reply