TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Marco Arment is selling Instapaper to Betaworks:

Instapaper is much bigger today than I could have predicted in 2008, and it has simply grown far beyond what one person can do. To really shine, it needs a full-time staff of at least a few people. But I wouldn’t be very good at hiring and leading a staff, and after more than five years, I’d like an opportunity to try other apps and creative projects. Instapaper needs a new home where it can be staffed and grown, but I didn’t want to give it to a big company that would probably just shut it down in six months.

Instapaper has been a key part of how I do work for years. Instapaper (and the New York Times application) are my two most-used applications.

Congratulations to Marco for creating such a useful and successful service, and congratulations to him for making what is a very hard decision: knowing when it’s time for your creation to move on to someone else who has the time and resources that it needs.

Here’s an example, I think, of where acquisitions are not at all wrong. Our community would do better to not automatically dismiss all acquisitions as a failure, but instead evaluate each one on their merits. Many times they are a failure; acquisitions are very difficult to do well. But sometimes, they’re the right choice for everyone involved, including customers.