Pinterest has purchased the popular read-it-later service Instapaper and plans to maintain the app and service for users. The purchase comes three years after Betaworks, the firm behind Digg, bought Instapaper from creator Marco Arment who currently developes the popular podcast player Overcast.
The team behind Instapaper wrote about the acquisition in a blog post, promising that the service will not change:
For you, the Instapaper end user and customer, nothing changes. The Instapaper team will be moving from betaworks in New York City to Pinterest’s headquarters in San Francisco, and we’ll continue to make Instapaper a great place to save and read articles.
The blog post goes on to share that the developer tool Instaparser will go away following the deal, however, with support ending on November 1.
As for the future of Instapaper under the ownership of Pinterest, the team sees an opportunity to do something new together:
Instapaper provides a compelling source for news-based content, and we’re excited to take those learnings to Pinterest’s discovery products. We’ll also be experimenting with using our parsing technology for certain Rich Pin types.
Over the years, Instapaper has shifted from one of the early successful paid apps on the App Store to a free app and service with web, iOS, and Android clients. Apple’s Safari Reading List feature built the article queue feature into the native browser on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and Pocket has long been a competitor, but I still use Instapaper to save and organize long form articles like an archive.
You can read the full announcement here, and find Instapaper for free on the App Store.
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