Scribd From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its

contents. Please co nsider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (October 2010) Scribd Type Private Founded San Francisco, California, USA (March 2007) Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA Key people Trip Adler (CEO, co-founder), Jared Friedman (CTO, co-founder), Tikhon Bernstam (CIO, co-founder) Services Social reading and publishing platform Website Scribd.com Alexa rank 234[1] Type of site Social Software Available in English, Spanish, Portuguese Current status Active Scribd (pronounced /skrbd/) is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing website which allo ws users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page us ing its iPaper format. Scribd was founded by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman in 20 06.[2] Scribd's major competitors are Docstoc, edocr, WePapers, and Issuu.[3] Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Awards/recognition 3 Timeline 4 Financials 5 Technology 6 Reception 7 Criticism 8 Controversy 9 Supported file formats 10 See also 11 References 12 External links [edit]History The idea for Scribd was originally inspired when Trip Adler was at Harvard and h ad a conversation with his father, John R. Adler about the difficulties of publi shing academic papers. He teamed up with cofounders Jared Friedman and Tikhon Be rnstam and they attended Y Combinator in Cambridge in the summer of 2006. Scribd was launched from a San Francisco apartment in March 2007 and quickly grew in t raffic. In 2008, it ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[4] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[5] and shortly thereaft er closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[6] Over 150 pro fessional publishers including Random House, Wiley, Workman, Houghton Mifflin Ha rcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press and Stanford University Press are now associated with Scribd. ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Sc ribd in December 2009. In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies with The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCr unch and MediaBistro. [7] Over 100 media companies now use Scribds branded reader to embed source material into their stories. In August 2010, news stories began to break and documents and books began to go viral on Scribd including the over

turned Prop 8 and HPs lawsuit against Mark Hurds move to Oracle. Adler is currently the CEO of Scribd, where he is responsible for the product an d strategic direction of the company. BusinessWeek named Adler one of the Best Yo ung Tech Entrepreneurs 2010.[8] [edit]Awards/recognition In September 2009, BusinessWeek named Scribd one the Worlds Most Intriguing Startu ps.[9] In December 2009, Forbes named Scribd one of its 10 Hot Startups. [10] Fast Company Named Scribd One of its Top 10 Most Innovative Media Companies in February 2010.[11] In May 2010, Scribd was recognized as one of the 2010 Hottest San Francisco Compa nies by Lead411.[12] On September 1, 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Techno logy Pioneer for 2011.[13][14] After the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award, Time Magazine named Scribd one of the 10 Start-Ups that Will Change Your Life.[15] [edit]Timeline In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smart phones. [16] In April 2010 Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast"[17] w hich allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and Twitter.[18] Also in April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the f8 Developer Conference. [19] Scribd rolled-out a re-design on September 13, 201 0 to become according to TechCrunch, the social network for reading.[20] [edit]Financials The company was initially funded with US$12,000 from Y Combinator, and received over US$3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Gro up.[21][22] In December 2008, the company raised US$9 million in a second round of funding, led by Charles River Ventures with re-investment from Redpoint Ventu res and Kinsey Hills Group, and hired as president George Consagra, former Bebo COO and managing director of Organic Inc.[23] Consagra left Scribd and became CE O of Good Guide in August 2010. David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribds board of directors in January 2010. Scribd hired Robert Macdonald, former head o f media and publisher partnerships at Google, in July 2010 as its SVP of busines s development and opened a New York office.[24] Scribd also utilizes Google Adve rtisements for revenue generation.[25] It also makes revenue from Scribd Store s ales.[26] In August 2010 it began beta testing premium services. Prior to the $9 million round, Scribd was valued at $10 million. Their current v aluation is likely much higher.[3] [edit]Technology Scribd uses iPaper which is a rich document format similar to PDF built for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.[27] 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 h as Flash installed (although Scribd has announced non-Flash support for the iPho ne).[28] All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word do cs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.org XML d ocuments, 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 vi ewer is also embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple to embed docume nts in their original layout regardless of file format. Scribd iPaper requires that Flash cookies are enabled, which is the default sett ing in Flash.[29] If the requirements are not met, there is no message; the whit e 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. [30] Its revenue model has gained coverag e on numerous blogs such as TechCrunch. On May 5, 2010, Scribd launched the largest implementation of HTML5 to date at t he Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. [31] TechCrunch reported that Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief technology offi cer Jared Friedman tells me: We are scrapping three years of Flash development an d betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page."[32] In J uly 2010 Publishers Weekly wrote a cover story on Scribd entitled Betting the Hou se on HTML5.[33] [edit]Reception Scribd has been received positively by several commentators. Scribd has been pra ised by several newspapers and has been dubbed as the potential "YouTube for doc uments".[34] Notable users of Scribd include Virginia senator Mark Warner.[35] Former Califor nia gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, New York Times DealBook reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, All Things D Reporter Kara Swisher, the U.S. Federal Communication s Commission (FCC), Red Cross, UNICEF, World Economic Forum, The World Bank, For d Motor Company, HewlettPackard, and Samsung. Scribd has currently more than 50 million users and it hosts more than tens of m illions of documents. Scribd s documents are embedded more than 10 million times across the web and more than 1.8 million searches are conducted on Scribd s web site everyday.[36] [edit]Criticism Scribd often has been accused of copyright infringement. In March 2009 Scribd la unched a copyright management system and has made upgrades to the system includi ng the addition of OCR. The New York Times reported in May 2009 that Scribd host ed pirated works by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin.[37] In September 2009 American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."[38] Her attor neys Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara sought class action status in their efforts to w in damages from Scribd for allegedly "egregious copyright infringement."[39][40] On May 11, 2009, Motoko Rich, writing in the New York Times, reported on Scribd hosting pirated works. Sibley Camara filed a class action lawsuit against Scrib d, accusing it of calculated copyright infringement for profit.[41] The suit was dropped in July 2010.[42] Since its inception Scribd has been served with 25 DMCA take down notices.[43] I n June 2010, SCRIBD tickets related to copyright infringements exceeded 66,000.[ citation needed]

[edit]Controversy In March 2009 the passwords of several Comcast customers were leaked on Scribd. The passwords were later removed when the news was published by The New York Tim es.[44][45][46] In July 2010, GigaOm reported that the script of The Social Network movie was uplo aded and leaked on Scribd and promptly taken down per Sonys DMCA request.[citatio n needed] In August 2010, Scribd began beta testing premium services including the Scribd Archive. The test was met with minor community backlash leading Scribd to make c hanges to its policies[clarification needed]. [edit]Supported file formats Supported formats include:[47] Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx) Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx) Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) OpenDocument (.odt, .odp, .ods) OpenOffice.org XML (.sxw, .sxi, .sxc) Plain text (.txt) Portable document format (.pdf) PostScript (.ps) Rich text format (.rtf) [edit]See also Docstoc Google Docs Issuu WePapers Yudu Media [edit]References ^ "Scribd.com". alexa.com. Retrieved 11 october 2010. ^ "Publishers, Authors Weigh Merits of Scribd". ^ a b "Scribd raises 9 million". GigaOM. Retrieved 2010-04-15. ^ "Scribd had a blowout year and so did the web document/". ^ Brad Stone (17 May 2009). "Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies". The New Yor k Times. Retrieved 11 October 2010. ^ Brad Stone (11 July 2009). "Simon & Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.c om". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October 2010. ^ "From The Desk Of Your News Outlet And Scribd". Reuters. 2009-10-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07. ^ "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010". Business Week. Retrieved 2010. ^ "The World s Most Intriguing Startups". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 2010-01-01. ^ Caulfield, Brian. "The Next Hot Start-Ups". Forbes. Retrieved 2009-12-03. ^ "Most Innovative Media Companies". Fast Company. Retrieved 2010-01-01. ^ "Lead411 launches "Hottest Companies in San Francisco" awards". ^ "Thirty-One Visionary Companies Selected as Technology Pioneers 2011". ^ "Foursquare, Scribd, And Spotify To Be Dubbed 2011 Technology Pioneers At Davo s". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2010-09-01. ^ "Tech Pioneers: 10 Start-Ups That Will Change Your Life". Time. Retrieved 2010 -01-01. ^ Fowler, Geoffrey A. (2010-02-10). "Scribd Plans Mobile Application". Wall Stre et Journal. Retrieved 2010-02-10. ^ "Scribd gets Readcasting : Autosharing made easy". CNet. Retrieved 2010-04-21 .

^ "Scribd launches readcast". Marketwire. Retrieved 2010-04-15. ^ "Scribd s bet on the Facebook Effect". CNN. 2010-04-21. Retrieved 2010-04-21. ^ "Scribd Redesign Is An Attempt To Become A "Social Network For Reading"". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 2010-09-13. ^ "Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint". ^ "Scribd". ^ "Scribd raises $9 million, hires new president for social publishing". ^ "Digital Musical Chairs: Google Exec to Scribd, Apple Exec to AOL, Yahoo Exec to Google!". All Things Digital. Retrieved 2010-07-19. ^ "Scribd". appappeal.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (22 July 2009). "scribd". London: guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 22 September 2010. ^ "iPaper: a Simple Way to View and Share Documents on the Web". ^ "Scribd on your iPhone". ^ "Global Storage Settings panel". Macromedia.com. Retrieved 2009-02-01. ^ "Scribd SAP Largest API Integration Press Release". Scribd. 2009-03-10. Retrie ved 22 September 2010. ^ "HTML5 and The Future of Publishing". Web 2.0 Expo. Retrieved 2010-05-06. ^ Erick Schonfeld (May 5, 2010). "Scribd CTO: We Are Scrapping Flash And Betting The Company On HTML5". Retrieved October 11, 2010. ^ "Betting the House on HTML 5". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2010-07-26. ^ "YouTube for documents". techcrunch.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 20 10. ^ "Mark Warner". scribd.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010. ^ "Scribd". CrunchBase. Retrieved 2010-04-15. ^ Motoko Rich (2009-05-11). "Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-11. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (2009-09-21). "Book sharing site Scribd rejects claims of copy right infringement". The Guardian (London). ^ Greg Sandoval (September 19, 2009). "Jammie Thomas lawyers file suit against S cribd". Retrieved October 11, 2010. ^ Motoko Rich (2009-09-19). "Jammie Thomas lawyers file suit against Scribd". CN ET News.com. Retrieved 2009-09-19. ^ "Class Action Copyright Suit Filed Against Scribd... By Jammie Thomas Lawyers ?". TechDirt. Retrieved 2009-09-21. ^ "Lawsuit Saying Scribd s Copyright-Protection Filters Infringe On Copyrights H as Been Dumped". Scribd. TechDirt. 19 July 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2010. ^ "Scribd looks like a winner". Scribd. TechCrunch. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 J anuary 2010. ^ Stone, Brad (29 March 2009). "passwords of comcast customers exposed". nytimes .com. Retrieved 1 January 2010. ^ "Comcast passwords leaked onto the web". cnet.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010. ^ "Comcast passwords exposed". hothardware.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 1 Janua ry 2010. ^ Jason (February 26, 2009). "Info, FAQs, and Forums/FAQ: Writing, Uploading and Managing Documents". Retrieved October 11, 2010. [edit]External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Scribd Official website Video: YouTube for writers [show]v d eOnline distribution platforms [show]v d ePresentation software View page ratings Rate this page What s this? Trustworthy Objective Complete

Well-written I am highly knowledgeable about this topic (optional) Submit ratings Categories: File sharing communities Dot-com Web 2.0 American websites C ompanies based in San Francisco, California Companies established in 2007 In ternet properties established in 2007 2007 establishments in the United States Ebook suppliers Log in / create accountArticleDiscussionReadEditView history Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Toolbox Print/export Languages Deutsch Espaol Franais Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Basa Jawa Polski Portugus Svenska This page was last modified on 29 August 2011 at 00:49. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; add itional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-prof it organization. Contact us Privacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersMobile view