Scribd 1

Scribd

Type Private

Founded San Francisco, California, USA

(March, 2007)

Headquarters San Francisco, California, USA

Key people Trip Adler (CEO),

George Consagra (President),
Jared Friedman (CTO),
Tikhon Bernstam (COO)

Services Document Sharing

Slogan |

Website [1]
www.scribd.com

Alexa rank [2]

234

Type of site Social Software

Available in English

Current status active

Scribd (pronounced English pronunciation: /ˈskrɪbd/) is a Web 2.0 based document-sharing website which allows users
to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd was founded
by Trip Adler in 2006.[3] Scribd's major competitors are Docstoc, WePapers, and issuu.[4]

History
The idea for Scribd was originally inspired when Trip Adler was at Harvard and had a conversation with his father,
John R. Adler about the difficulties of publishing academic papers. He teamed up with cofounders Jared Friedman
and Tikhon Bernstam 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 traffic. In 2008, it ranked as one of the top 20
social media sites according to Comscore.[5] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[6] and shortly thereafter
closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[7] Over 150 professional publishers including Random
House, Wiley, Workman, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press and Stanford University
Press. ProQuest 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, TechCrunch and MediaBistro. [8] Over 100 media companies now use
Scribd’s 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 overturned 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 and strategic direction of the company.
BusinessWeek named Adler one of the “Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010”.[9]
Scribd 2

Awards/recognition
In September 2009, BusinessWeek named Scribd one the “World’s Most Intriguing Startups”.[10] In December 2009,
Forbes named Scribd one of its “10 Hot Startups”. [11] Fast Company Named Scribd “One of its Top 10 Most
Innovative Media Companies” in February 2010.[12]
In May 2010, Scribd was recognized as one of the “2010 Hottest San Francisco Companies” by Lead411.[13]
On September 1, 2010, the World Economic Forum announced the company as a Technology Pioneer for 2011.[14]
[15]
After the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award, Time Magazine named Scribd one of the “10
Start-Ups that Will Change Your Life”.[16]

Timeline
In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smartphones. [17] In April 2010 Scribd
launched a new feature called "Readcast"[18] which allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and
Twitter.[19] Also in April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the f8 Developer
Conference. [20] Scribd rolled-out a re-design on September 13, 2010 to become according to TechCrunch, “the
social network for reading.”[21]

Financials
The company was initially funded with USD $12,000 from Y Combinator, and received over USD $3.7 million in
June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Group.[22] [23] 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.[24] Consagra left Scribd and became 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 of media and publisher partnerships at Google, in July, 2010 as
its SVP of business development and opened a New York office.[25] Scribd also utilizes Google Advertisements for
revenue generation.[26] It also makes revenue from Scribd Store sales.[27] In August, 2010 it began beta testing
premium services.
Prior to the $9 million round, Scribd was valued at $10 million. Their current valuation is likely much higher.[4]

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.[28] 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
(although Scribd has announced non-Flash support for the iPhone).[29] All major document types can be formatted
into iPaper including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.org
XML 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 layout regardless of file format.
Scribd iPaper requires that Flash cookies are enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[30] 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. [31] Its revenue model has gained coverage on numerous blogs such as TechCrunch.
Scribd 3

On May 5, 2010, Scribd launched the largest implementation of HTML5 to date at the Web 2.0 Conference in San
Francisco. [32] TechCrunch reported that Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and
chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and 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.”"[33] In July, 2010 Publishers Weekly wrote a cover story on Scribd entitled
“Betting the House on HTML5.”[34]

Reception
Scribd has been received positively by several commentators. Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and has
been dubbed as the potential "YouTube for documents".[35]
Notable users of Scribd include Virginia senator Mark Warner.[36] California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman,
New York Times DealBook reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, All Things D Reporter Kara Swisher, the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), Red Cross, UNICEF, World Economic 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 millions 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 website everyday.[37]
Scribd has struck deals with several major book publishers to publish content online. These include Random House,
Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Company, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Thomas Nelson, and Manning
Publications.[38]

Criticism

Copyright issues
Scribd often has been accused of copyright infringement. In March 2009 Scribd launched a copyright management
system and has made upgrades to the system including the addition of OCR. The New York Times reported in May
2009 that Scribd hosted pirated works by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin.[39]
In September 2009 American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen
copyrighted works of innumerable authors."[40] Her attorneys Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara sought class action status
in their efforts to win damages from Scribd for allegedly "egregious copyright infringement."[41] [42] 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 Scribd, accusing it of calculated copyright infringement for profit.[43] The suit was
dropped in July 2010.[44]
Since it inception Scribd has been served with 25 DMCA take down notices.[45] In June 2010, SCRIBD tickets
related to copyright infringements exceeded 66,000.
Scribd 4

Controversy

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 The New York Times.[46] [47] [48]
In July 2010, GigaOm reported that the script of “The Social Network” movie was uploaded and leaked on Scribd
and promptly taken down per Sony’s DMCA request.
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 changes to its policies.

Supported file formats

Supported formats include:[49]
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• OpenDocument formats (.odt, .odp, .ods)
• OpenOffice.org XML formats (.sxw, .sxi, .sxc)
• Plain text (.txt)
• Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• PostScript (.ps)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)

See also
• Docstoc
• Google Docs
• Issuu
• WePapers
• Yudu Media

References
[1] http:/ / www. scribd. com/
[2] "Scribd.com" (http:/ / www. alexa. com/ siteinfo/ scribd. com). alexa.com. . Retrieved 11 october 2010.
[3] "Publishers, Authors Weigh Merits of Scribd" (http:/ / www. publishersweekly. com/ article/ CA6640708. html?q=scribd/ ). .
[4] "Scribd raises 9 million" (http:/ / gigaom. com/ 2008/ 12/ 19/ scribd-raises-9-million-still-working-on-business/ ). GigaOM. . Retrieved
2010-04-15.
[5] "Scribd had a blowout year and so did the web document/" (http:/ / www. techcrunch. com/ 2008/ 12/ 31/
scribd-had-a-blowout-year-and-so-did-the-web-document/ ). .
[6] Brad Stone (17 May 2009). "" (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 05/ 18/ technology/ start-ups/ 18download. html). The New York Times. .
Retrieved 11 October 2010.
[7] Brad Stone (11 July 2009). "Simon & Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com" (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 06/ 12/ technology/
internet/ 12books. html). The New York Times. .
[8] "From The Desk Of Your News Outlet And Scribd" (http:/ / blogs. reuters. com/ mediafile/ 2009/ 10/ 07/
from-the-desk-of-your-news-outlet-and-scribd/ ). Reuters. 2009-10-07. . Retrieved 2009-10-07.
[9] "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010" (http:/ / images. businessweek. com/ ss/ 10/ 04/ 0419_best_young_tech_entrepreneurs/ 2. htm).
Business Week. . Retrieved 2010.
[10] "The World's Most Intriguing Startups" (http:/ / images. businessweek. com/ ss/ 09/ 11/ 1112_most_intriguing_companies/ 21. htm).
BusinessWeek. . Retrieved 2010-01-01.
[11] "The Next Hot Start-Ups" (http:/ / www. forbes. com/ 2009/ 12/ 03/ zynga-facebook-twitter-technology-breakthroughs-startups_slide_3.
html). Forbes. . Retrieved 2009-12-03.
Scribd 5

[12] "Most Innovative Media Companies" (http:/ / www. fastcompany. com/ mic/ 2010/ industry/ most-innovative-media-companies). Fast
Company. . Retrieved 2010-01-01.
[13] "Lead411 launches "Hottest Companies in San Francisco" awards" (http:/ / www. lead411. com/ san-francisco-companies. html). .
[14] "Thirty-One Visionary Companies Selected as Technology Pioneers 2011" (http:/ / www. weforum. org/ en/ media/ Latest News Releases/
NR_TP2011). .
[15] "Foursquare, Scribd, And Spotify To Be Dubbed 2011 Technology Pioneers At Davos" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/ 2010/ 09/ 01/
technology-pioneers-2011-foursquare-scribd-spotify/ ). TechCrunch. . Retrieved 2010-09-01.
[16] "Tech Pioneers: 10 Start-Ups That Will Change Your Life" (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/ specials/ packages/ article/
0,28804,2017050_2017049_2017046,00. html). Time. . Retrieved 2010-01-01.
[17] Fowler, Geoffrey A. (2010-02-10). "Scribd Plans Mobile Application" (http:/ / online. wsj. com/ article/
SB10001424052748704140104575057501723639926. html). Wall Street Journal. . Retrieved 2010-02-10.
[18] "Scribd gets 'Readcasting': Autosharing made easy" (http:/ / news. cnet. com/ 8301-27076_3-20003081-248. html?tag=mncol). CNet. .
Retrieved 2010-4-21.
[19] "Scribd launches readcast" (http:/ / www. marketwire. com/ press-release/
Scribd-Launches-Readcast-Integrates-With-Facebook-Social-Plugins-Make-Reading-More-Social-1151594. htm). Marketwire. . Retrieved
2010-04-15.
[20] "Scribd's bet on the Facebook Effect" (http:/ / tech. fortune. cnn. com/ 2010/ 04/ 21/ scribds-bet-on-the-facebook-effect/ ). CNN.
2010-04-21. . Retrieved 2010-04-21.
[21] "Scribd Redesign Is An Attempt To Become A “Social Network For Reading”" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/ 2010/ 09/ 13/ scribd-redesign/ ).
TechCrunch. . Retrieved 2010-09-13.
[22] "Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint" (http:/ / www. techcrunch. com/ 2007/ 06/ 04/ scribd-banks-35-million-from-redpoint/ ). .
[23] "Scribd" (http:/ / www. crunchbase. com/ company/ scribd#src4). .
[24] "Scribd raises $9 million, hires new president for social publishing" (http:/ / venturebeat. com/ 2008/ 12/ 19/
scribd-raises-9-million-hires-new-president-for-social-publishing/ ). .
[25] "Digital Musical Chairs: Google Exec to Scribd, Apple Exec to AOL, Yahoo Exec to Google!" (http:/ / kara. allthingsd. com/ 20100719/
digital-musical-chairs-google-exec-to-scribd-apple-exec-to-aol-yahoo-exec-to-google/ ?mod=ATD_search). All Things Digital. . Retrieved
2010-07-19.
[26] "Scribd" (http:/ / www. appappeal. com/ app/ scribd/ ). appappeal.com. 29 March 2009. . Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[27] Johnson, Bobbie (22 July 2009). "scribd" (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ technology/ 2009/ jul/ 22/ scribd-trip-adler-youtube). London:
guardian.co.uk. . Retrieved 22 September 2010.
[28] "iPaper: a Simple Way to View and Share Documents on the Web" (http:/ / blog. wired. com/ monkeybites/ 2008/ 02/ ipaper-a-simple.
html). .
[29] "Scribd on your iPhone" (http:/ / blog. scribd. com/ 2008/ 04/ 05/ scribd-on-your-iphone/ ). .
[30] "Global Storage Settings panel" (http:/ / www. macromedia. com/ support/ documentation/ en/ flashplayer/ help/ settings_manager03. html).
Macromedia.com. . Retrieved 2009-02-01.
[31] "Scribd SAP Largest API Integration Press Release" (http:/ / www. scribd. com/ doc/ 29110682/
Scribd-SAP-Largest-API-Integration-Press-Release). Scribd. 2009-03-10. . Retrieved 22 September 2010.
[32] "HTML5 and The Future of Publishing" (http:/ / www. web2expo. com/ webexsf2010/ public/ schedule/ detail/ 15348). Web 2.0 Expo. .
Retrieved 2010-05-06.
[33] Erick Schonfeld (May 5, 2010). "Scribd CTO: We Are Scrapping Flash And Betting The Company On HTML5" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/
2010/ 05/ 05/ scribd-html5/ ). . Retrieved October 11, 2010.
[34] "Betting the House on HTML 5" (http:/ / www. publishersweekly. com/ pw/ by-topic/ digital/ content-and-e-books/ article/
43942-betting-the-house-on-html5. html). Publishers Weekly. . Retrieved 2010-07-26.
[35] "YouTube for documents" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/ 2007/ 03/ 06/ scribd-youtube-for-text-gets-300k/ ). techcrunch.com. 29 March 2009. .
Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[36] "Mark Warner" (http:/ / www. scribd. com/ MarkWarner). scribd.com. 29 March 2009. . Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[37] "Scribd" (http:/ / www. crunchbase. com/ company/ scribd). CrunchBase. . Retrieved 2010-04-15.
[38] "Major book publishers turn to scribd" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/ 2009/ 03/ 17/ major-book-publishers-start-turning-to-scribd/ ).
TechCrunch. . Retrieved 2010-04-15.
[39] Motoko Rich (2009-05-11). "Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web" (http:/ / www. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 05/ 12/ technology/ internet/
12digital. html?em). The New York Times. . Retrieved 2009-05-11.
[40] Johnson, Bobbie (2009-09-21). "Book sharing site Scribd rejects claims of copyright infringement" (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/
technology/ 2009/ sep/ 21/ scribd-lawsuit). The Guardian (London). .
[41] Greg Sandoval (September 19, 2009). "Jammie Thomas lawyers file suit against Scribd" (http:/ / news. cnet. com/
8301-1023_3-10357108-93. html). . Retrieved October 11, 2010.
[42] Motoko Rich (2009-09-19). "Jammie Thomas lawyers file suit against Scribd" (http:/ / news. cnet. com/ 8301-1023_3-10357108-93.
html?part=rss& subj=news& tag=2547-1_3-0-5). CNET News.com. . Retrieved 2009-09-19.
[43] "Class Action Copyright Suit Filed Against Scribd... By Jammie Thomas' Lawyers?" (http:/ / www. techdirt. com/ articles/ 20100719/
12105310280. shtml). TechDirt. . Retrieved 2009-09-21.
Scribd 6

[44] "Lawsuit Saying Scribd's Copyright-Protection Filters Infringe On Copyrights Has Been Dumped" (http:/ / www. techdirt. com/ articles/
20090919/ 1907586243. shtml/ ). Scribd. TechDirt. 19 July 2009. . Retrieved 24 September 2010.
[45] "Scribd looks like a winner" (http:/ / techcrunch. com/ 2007/ 03/ 25/ scribd-growing-like-youtube/ ). Scribd. TechCrunch. 29 March 2009. .
Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[46] Stone, Brad (29 March 2009). "passwords of comcast customers exposed" (http:/ / bits. blogs. nytimes. com/ 2009/ 03/ 16/
passwords-of-8000-comcast-customers-exposed/ ). nytimes.com. . Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[47] "Comcast passwords leaked onto the web" (http:/ / news. cnet. com/ 8301-1009_3-10197789-83. html). cnet.com. 29 March 2009. .
Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[48] "Comcast passwords exposed" (http:/ / hothardware. com/ News/ Comcast-User-Names-and-Passwords-Exposed/ ). hothardware.com. 29
March 2009. . Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[49] Jason (February 26, 2009). "Info, FAQs, and Forums/FAQ: Writing, Uploading and Managing Documents" (http:/ / support. scribd. com/
forums/ 35566/ entries/ 25092). . Retrieved October 11, 2010.

External links
• Official website (http://www.scribd.com/)
• Video: 'YouTube' for writers (http://money.cnn.com/video/ft/#/video/fortune/2009/01/26/fortune.
disruptors.scribd.fortune)
Article Sources and Contributors 7

Article Sources and Contributors

Scribd  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=401369145  Contributors: 3dh3m, Adoniscik, Aidar24, Ajnnadeau, AndyAgr, Apoc2400, ArnoldReinhold, Badmachine, Batmandk,
Cappert, CartesianAngst, Chris the speller, ChrisSquire99, Coercorash, Colfer2, Dale Arnett, DreamGuy, Dskrvk, ErkDemon, Falcon8765, Feministo, Fritzpoll, Gary King, Geo Swan,
GoingBatty, Ground Zero, Gyrobo, HaeB, Halo, Ida Shaw, Ineedspeed2007, Jimbo Wales, Jm3, Kxmsf, L Kensington, Lfh, LimeHat, MER-C, MarB4, Masrudin, Mcld, Meco, Melab-1, Motyka,
Novonium, Ph.eyes, Psychonaut, R. S. Shaw, RISCfuture, Reach Out to the Truth, Riffic, Rudymoman, Scarpy, Sgpsaros, Slipslide, Spoon!, Stoffelsz, SummerWithMorons, Tastiles,
Thesupermat, Thumperward, Timneu22, Tinyrock, Treyharris1, Trivialist, Urbanrenewal, WWB, Waterfox, YUL89YYZ, Yama, Пика Пика, 75 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors

Image:Scribd logo.png  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Scribd_logo.png  License: unknown  Contributors: User:CartesianAngst, User:Jasonbentley, User:STBotI,
User:Salavat

License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/