Instapaper updates its apps, overhauls dated web site to boost subscribers

Instapaper’s website is no longer “notoriously sucky.”

Instapaper owner Betaworks plans to launch an update across the service’s iOS, Android, and web apps today, Betaworks’ Andrew McLaughlin told VentureBeat.

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Folks using Instapaper — which saves web pages for later reading — can now highlight text, which syncs across all of your devices. They can also push highlighted text to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Evernote, and Pinboard.

Text highlighting is a freemium feature, said McLaughlin: Non-subscribers get 5 free highlights per month, while subscribers get an unlimited amount.

“To reach our goal of $100 billion a year in app revenues, we’re beefing up Instapaper’s subscriber benefits,” McLaughlin joked.

Betaworks majorly overhauled the Instapaper website so it features a fully-functional file system. It now includes a number of drag-and-drop features for organizing files and folders, too. It’s finally in-line with the service’s mobile apps, said Betaworks’ Brian Donohue.

The site also includes the new highlighting feature.

The “major focus for the updates is text highlighting, which is something that a bunch of our users have consistently asked us for and none of our competitors have,” Donohue told VentureBeat via email.

“Moving forward, we’re really excited to continue building tools that will help users read better and smarter.”

Instapaper competes with Pocket, another app that helps people keep track of media they like on the web.

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