Scribd is an online platform that lets you publish and discover documents on the Web. Itworks like YouTube, but instead of videos you're browsing and uploading texts. UsingScribd you can find and share interesting documents in a neat Flash based format thatloads quickly and is easy to read. Navigating through the site gets messy, but if you'reinto sharing and finding quirky or intriguing documents, Scribd has what you're lookingfor.According to the folks at Scribd you'll find more information on Scribd than onWikipedia
.
They told me Scribd has about 5 billion words of text featured on its sitewhich trumps the 2 billion words found on Wikipedia, so there's a lot of activity on thesite. Scribd differs from a blog in that it's more of a user generated library for documentsthan an online journal you'd update periodically. Unlike a blog you can upload richlyformatted text directly up to the site. So documents uploaded to Scribd will contain all thefont effects and graphics just as they appeared in the original document. Since Scribdgives you unlimited storage you also use the site to manage documents online. Onecollege professor even uses the site to collect papers and give feedback to his studentsover the Web.To sign up, just pick a username and password. Click the Upload tab to start throwingdocuments onto Scribd. You can upload multiple files at a time in many formats including picture files, pdfs, Microsoft Office files, and Open Office files. Scribed reps told methere's no set size limit to what you can upload, but unusually large files will take muchlonger to convert. Once you've chosen what you want to upload the next screen lets youadd descriptions, categories, and add tags. After the document is uploaded it goes onqueue to be converted to into Scridb's Flash format. This can take a while, but you cannavigate away from the page while the document is converted on Scribd severs.You can view all of your documents from the My Docs section of the site. TrafficAnalytics lets you keep track of views each individual document is getting on Scribd. Youuse the analytics to what search queries included your documents as a result, look at aworld map of users who checked out your document, or see what search engines haveindexed your document. You can also view the traffic stats of any document on Scribd.You'll find wide variety of documents on Scribd such as: school papers, poemsPowerPoint presentations, academic research articles, government documents, funny pictures, free online books, excel spreadsheets, opinion essays, and more. Hate speechand unauthorized copyrighted material are prohibited on site. The site is self policing, sousers can flag objectionable content which administrators can review and removethemselves. Erotic content is allowed on the site as long as it's labeled Adult. Navigating Scribd reminds me of navigating Fotolog [LINK]. There is interesting contentto be found, but you'll mostly have to stumble on it by chance. You can browse bycategories like humor, business, or politics, but your best bet is to browse by what's popular, meaning the most viewed, most liked, most discussed options under the site'sBrowse tab. Browsing by Most Liked I found this copy of a funny exit interview left by aVerizon phone operator [http://www.scribd.com/doc/49542/funniest-exit-interview]. The
Leave a Comment