Mark Armstrong, like many people in New York City, was a commuter — he commuted to Time Inc.’s midtown Manhattan offices from Cobble HIll, Brooklyn, and it was the tedium of the commute that led him to seek ways to keep himself busy when he was without Wi-Fi. One day he found Instapaper, and before he knew it, there was a lot of stuff he could save and read when offline.

Soon he was asking the question: What if there were a service that aggregated the very best articles on the web for commuters like him to read on his iPhone? A single article a day would do. He asked the question to his Twitter freinds and asked them to share stories with him with the hashtag #longreads. Replies poured in, and so did links to other stories. And with that Longreads, a service that curates quality writing from…