Pinterest Acquires News-Bookmarking App Instapaper

Pinterest Inc. said Tuesday that it had acquired article-bookmarking app Instapaper. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Instapaper, founded in 2008, is one of many apps that let people save webpages to be read later. The startup, which has three employees including Chief Executive Brian Donohue, was acquired by New York-based startup incubator Betaworks in 2013.

Pinterest said Instapaper would continue operating as a separate app, a departure from the fate of its other acquisitions, which are usually shut down after the purchase is completed.

"How to read online is changing as social platforms like Pinterest play a larger role in the discovery, sharing and reading experiences," said John Borthwick, founder and CEO of Betaworks.

One of the primary ways that more than 100 million people use Pinterest is to save images and articles from across the web to a self-curated "board" on Pinterest. The content can range from lifestyle news to how-to guides.

Pinterest said it would leverage Instapaper's expertise in recommending articles based on user behavior. Pinterest, which aims to become a kind of search engine where users can discover new ideas, has been working to improve its own recommendation service as it provides suggested pins to users based on the content they have saved and shared.

"Instapaper will work with us to continue building indexing and recommendations technologies, and we look forward to building great products together," said Pinterest's lead product manager, Steve Davis, in a written statement Tuesday.

Tech companies have worked to integrate media content into their platforms as they look for ways to keep users drawn to their services. Facebook Inc. serves free news stories through Instant Articles, Snapchat Inc.'s app houses original content from media companies and Apple Inc. aggregates articles on its devices through Apple News.

A spokeswoman for Pinterest said Instapaper has millions of users, without specifying a number, and said the majority of them are male. In contrast, Pinterest's audience has skewed female.

Write to Yoree Koh at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 23, 2016 14:15 ET (18:15 GMT)

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