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. Scrib
d was launched from a San Francisco apartment in March 2007 and quickly grew in
traffic. 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 thereaf
ter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[6] Over 150 p
rofessional publishers including Random House, Wiley, Workman, Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press and Stanford University Press. ProQu
est began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd 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 Scribd s branded reader
to embed source material into their stories. In August, 2010, news stories bega
n to break and documents and books began to go viral on Scribd including the ove
rturned Prop 8 and HP s lawsuit against Mark Hurd s 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 World s 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 Februar
y 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 Pionee
r 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]
which 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, 20
10 to become according to TechCrunch, the social network for reading. [20]
[edit] Financials
The company was initially funded with USD $12,000 from Y Combinator, and receive
d over USD $3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills
Group.[21][22] In December 2008, the company raised USD $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.[23] Consagra left Scribd and bec
ame CEO of Good Guide in August, 2010.
David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribd s
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 busine
ss development and opened a New York office.[24] Scribd also utilizes Google Adv
ertisements for revenue generation.[25] It also makes revenue from Scribd Store
sales.[26] In August, 2010 it began beta testing premium services.
Prior to the $9 million dollar round, Scribd was valued at $10 million. Their cu
rrent valuation 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 Ho
use 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] California gub
ernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, New York Times DealBook reporter Andrew Ross S
orkin, All Things D Reporter Kara Swisher, the FCC, Red Cross, UNICEF, World Eco
nomic Forum, The World Bank, Ford 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]
Scribd has struck deals with several major book publishers to publish content on
line. These include Random House, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Company,
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Thomas Nelson, and Manning Publications.[37]
[edit] Criticism
[edit] Copyright Issues
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.[38]
In September 2009 American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly
profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."[39] 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."[40][41]
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.[42] The suit was
dropped in July 2010.[43]
Since it inception Scribd has been served with 25 DMCA take down notices.[44] In
June 2010, SCRIBD tickets related to copyright infringements exceeded 66,000.[c
itation needed]
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Comcast password leaks
In March 2009 the passwords of several Comcast customers were leaked on Scribd.
The passwords were later removed when the news was published by New York Times.[
45][46][47] In July, 2010 GigaOm reported that the script of The Social Network mo
vie was uploaded and leaked on Scribd and promptly taken down per Sony s DMCA requ
est. In August 2010, Scribd began beta testing premium services including the Sc
ribd Archive. The test was met with minor community backlash leading Scribd to m
ake changes to its policies.