Marco Arment has sold his popular read-it-later service Instapaper to Betaworks, the company that recently acquired and rebranded Digg. For years, Instapaper has been a widely-used web service and iOS app for saving links to read later in a clean layout without ads.
Don’t worry, Instapaper won’t be going anywhere. Arment and Betaworks plan to keep developing and maturing the service.
The news was announced on Arment’s blog today:
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.
Since the website was launched in 2008, running Instapaper has been a one-man operation for Arment. While Instapaper was the only service of its kind at first, competitors with more manpower, like Pocket, have gained more popularity recently. Now that Betaworks is in charge, more resources and be poured into maintaing and growing Instapaper.
Arment plans to stay on as an advisor to Betaworks. He has been busy recently with The Magazine, a Newsstand-only publication he launched last year. “I’d like an opportunity to try other apps and creative projects,” he said.
Source: Marco.org
