In the mold of great businesses we admire, our goal is
to efficiently use our outside investment to improve the
lives of millions of users
(6 months ago)
All things point to the app being a hit, users loved it. Nothing suggests a failure, in fact they say that in spite of the good feedback "we’ve decided to pursue our vision in a new way".
I posted this knowing that it looks snarky, but it is business as usual. I just can't help feeling annoyed every time a great service shuts down for no apparent reason, and guess this sentiment is very common. I'm relieved it's not one I trusted with any important data or depended upon.
Not that it really matters for Spool, but a request to everyone that has a product or company blog: please make it easy for me to get to your main site. A simple link would work.
Edit: woops, looks like spool's primary domain redirects to the blog anyway. Perhaps the lack of a link is intentional.
Build and Analyze -- the 5by5 Network podcast with Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin -- had an excellent discussion this week[0] on whether larger companies like Twitter and Facebook would acquire any of the popular "read later" services.
Paraphrasing, but Marco said that Pocket would "be acquired within a couple of years." Today's Spool acquisition, however, removes one potential buyer from the running. I imagine these VC-backed "read later" services might be slightly concerned today.
Could be a tech acquisition in addition to a talent acquisition - entire possibly that the services will magically reappear on Facebook someday. (Yes, Facebook could easily build this, but sometimes it's cheaper to buy.)
Agreed. I was a big Spool fan (used their iOS app a lot) so I'm sad to see them go. Watched tons of tech presentations on my iPhone during long flights.
There are ton....ton....ton. This market is over crowded and they are so poor in seo. Yesterday I was trying to find an app to view youtube offline and nothing came in google search. I know iSwift from the days when I was searching for job. Here is the link
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iswifter-flash-web-browser/id...
