I’m with Ben — I really don’t like the sound of this.
The sad truth is that:
- Most users don’t like paying for things.
- Running a service costs money.
So, Readability, Instagram and other startups offer free services, and try to make money on the back end of things. Often, this means ads get inserted in to placed they weren’t previously. With Readability, does this mean ads in an Unread List?
I’d much rather pay Marco $5 and know that Instapaper will stay around — and stay good — for a long time to come.