Scribd
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | San Francisco, California (March, 2007) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Key people | Trip Adler (CEO), George Consagra (President), Jared Friedman (CTO), Tikhon Bernstam (COO) |
| Services | Document Sharing |
| Website | www.scribd.com |
| Type of site | Social Software |
| Available in | English |
| Current status | active |
Scribd is a document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd currently has more than 50 million monthly users and more than 50,000 documents are uploaded daily.[1]
iPaper is a rich document format similar to PDF built for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.[2] iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the same across different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without conversion, as long as the reader has Flash installed. All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenOffice documents, and PostScript files.
All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows published documents to either be private or open to the larger Scribd community. The iPaper document viewer is also embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple to embed documents in their original "printed" layout regardless of file format. See an example in The New York Times here.
Scribd iPaper requires that Flash cookies are enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[3] If the requirements are not met, there is no message; the white or gray display area is simply blank.
Scribd launched its own API to power external/third-party applications, however, only a few applications use this API. Its revenue model has gained coverage on numerous blogs such as TechCrunch.
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[edit] Investors
The company was initially funded with $12,000 from Y Combinator, and received over $3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Group.[4][5] In December 2008, the company raised $9 million in a second round of funding, led by Charles River Ventures with re-investment from Redpoint Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group, and hired as president George Consagra, former Bebo COO and managing director of Organic Inc.[6]
[edit] Piracy concerns
On May 11, 2009, Motoko Rich, writing in the New York Times, reported on Scribd hosting pirated works.[7]
[edit] Supported file formats
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2009) |
Supported formats include:
- Portable Document Format (.pdf)
- PostScript (.ps)
- Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
- Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
- Microsoft Excel (.xls, xlsx)
- OpenOffice Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
- OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
- OpenOffice Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
- All OpenDocument formats
- Plain text (.txt)
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
[edit] References
- ^ Publishers, Authors Weigh Merits of Scribd
- ^ iPaper: a Simple Way to View and Share Documents on the Web | Compiler from Wired.com
- ^ Global Storage Settings panel, Macromedia.com. The optional setting is "Allow third-party Flash content to store data on your computer." Accessed 2009-02-01.
- ^ Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint
- ^ Scribd | CrunchBase Company Profile
- ^ Scribd raises $9 million, hires new president for social publishing
- ^ Motoko Rich (2009-05-11). "Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/technology/internet/12digital.html?em. Retrieved on 2009-05-11.
