Will Instapaper And Other "Read It Later" Services Change The Way Online Content Is Written?

Chad Catacchio | The Next Web

Perhaps it's the iPad or the large screens on smartphones. Maybe it's the increasing attractiveness of reasonably-priced ebook readers. It could just be that the constant river of news is just too engrossing to spent too much time on the shore, reading.

Whatever the reason, "read-it-later" services such as Instapaper, are something that we see exploding in the near future, and when that happens, creators of online written content may just have to change the way they write.

How Instapaper works

If you're not familiar with Instapaper and other such services, basically they allow you to - with one click - save an entire article to a central account (in a way similar to bookmarks) that then strips out all of the ads and other distracting stuff (more on that below), leaving you with nicely formated text and pictures for you to read whenever you feel like, without having to go back to the website.

The "instant-paper" can then be saved/exported/printed in a number of formats, including ePub, so if you wish, you can read them completely offline. It's a really dead-simple concept, but a completely addicting one as well - which is why we think it's going to take off, and quick.

So in our minds, this will be a new - and powerful - form of consumption online. Basically, it could end up becoming the TiVo of the written Web - where users just grab what they want, store it away and watch it - ad free (i.e. without the distracting stuff) - on their portable devices whenever they wish. The question is, though, does it work for all written content?

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