Instapaper Gets Folders And Goes Social

June 22, 2009 ·Filed Under Technology News

The online bookmarking functionality I use most often isn’t Delicious or Google Bookmarks or even my browser’s bookmarking area. Instead, I use Instapaper, a really simple way to store things that you want read or come back to later. And the service just got a series of updates by the weekend to manufacture it even better.

The biggest update is the addition is the addition of folders. You can now better organize the stuff you bookmark. Developer Marco Arment calls that “by far, the most requested feature in Instapaper’s history.” He had been waiting to unveil the web version of folders until it was live in the 2.0 Pro version of the Instapaper iPhone app, but apparently Apple has been really slow at approving it (no surprise there), so he rolled it out early.

Another big update is that you can now subscribe to other Instapaper users’ Starred items, making the service social. The advent of the folder feature allows for that, as when you visit on the “Add folder” link, you now have an option to add another users’ starred items simply by typing in their Instapaper username. Those items are placed in the left-hand sidebar of the Instapaper site, and when you go on a user’s name, you will see all their items just as you would your own Instapaper items.

Starring an item in Instapaper works and looks precisely like the same

functionality does in Gmail. But before that feature, there wasn’t much of a reason to star items beyond further highlighting what you’ve already bookmarked. Now there is a reason — to share things.

At the core of Instapaper is its bookmarklet, which allows for one-click saving on items on the web. That too has received a nice upgrade. Instead of popping open another small browser window to let you know something is saved, it’s all done on the actual page you are saving now as a quick overlay. Apparently, that works better for the new Safari 4 web browser.

And finally, Arment announced that the current version of Instapaper Pro, the premium version of the iPhone app (there is additionally a free version) is available for $4.99 for a limited moment, as Instapaper 2.0 looms. that is a nice reduction from the app’s normal $9.99 price and whether you buy the current version (1.3) at that discounted price, you’ll still get the full 2.0 update for free. You can find the app in the App Store here.

Information provided by CrunchBase

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