Robb. Knight.

Instapaper, having been sold to Betaworks in April, has a shiny new beta for the web interface which is long overdue. Not that the site wasn’t usable, but it was starting to feel very dated when compared to the likes of Pocket. Despite this I had stuck with Instapaper as it had the one thing Pocket still doesn’t have: a way for me to pay them for the service, but that’s a topic for another day.

The new interface is a complete overhaul of the old site and looks great. There are a number of things that could do with improvement (too much whitespace, not great on smaller screens) but it’s still in beta so I’m sure things will get better before the public release.

It’s nice, for once, to see something be sold and not just left to fade into internet history. Although it was fairly certain this wouldn’t happen based on what Marco Arment said in this announcement of the sale:

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.

On top of the web beta, Betaworks said in a blog post that there will be “..new versions of the Instapaper iOS and Android apps”. This is an exciting time for Instapaper users and the future looks great for the service.