Scribd is a digital library, featuring an ebook subscription service that includ

es New York Times bestsellers and classics.

Launched in 2007 by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, Scribd also features written
works contributed by users around the world and is headquartered in San Francisc
o, CA. Backed by Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures, Sc
ribd is a major website with more than 80 million active readers coming to the s
ite every month.[2]
Scribd's subscription service is available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone sma
rtphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, the Nook, and personal compute
rs for a monthly fee of $8.99 ($3.99 with annual commitment), and lets readers h
ave unlimited access to more than 500,000 books from over 900 publishers, includ
ing Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, RosettaBooks, and Workman.[3]
History[edit]
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 publ
ishing academic papers. He teamed up with co-founders Jared Friedman and Tikhon
Bernstam and they attended Y Combinator in Cambridge in the summer of 2006.[4] S
cribd 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 accordin
g to Comscore.[5] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd Store,[6] and shortly the
reafter closed a deal with Simon & Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[7] Over 90
0 publishers including HarperCollins, Workman, RosettaBooks, Random House, Wiley
, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson, Harvard University Press and Stanford Univ
ersity Press are now associated with Scribd. ProQuest began publishing dissertat
ions 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.[8] 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 overt
urned Prop 8 and HPs lawsuit against Mark Hurds move to Oracle Corporation.
In October 2013, Scribd officially launched the first subscription service for d
igital books, often called the "Netflix for ebooks",[9] giving readers unlimited
access to Scribd library.[10] The company also announced a partnership with maj
or publishing company HarperCollins.[2] The official statement revealed that the
"majority" of the HarperCollins US and HarperCollins Christian catalogs will be
available in Scribd's subscription service. Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digit
al officer at HarperCollins, explained to the media that the deal represents the
first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its catalog.
[11]
As of December 2013, Adler is the CEO of Scribd, where he is responsible for the
product and strategic direction of the company. Adler was named in BusinessWeek
's "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010" list.[12]
Timeline[edit]
In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smart
phones.[13] In April 2010 Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast",[14] w
hich allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and Twitter.[15] Also in
April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the
Facebook f8 Developer Conference.[16]
Scribd rolled-out a redesign on September 13, 2010 to become, according to TechC
runch, "the social network for reading".[17]
In October 2013, Scribd launched its ebook subscription service, allowing reader
s to pay a flat monthly fee in exchange for unlimited access to all of Scribd's
book titles.[18]
Financials[edit]
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.[19][20] 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.[21] 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. In January 2011, Scribd raised its largest r
ound, bringing in an additional $13M. The latest round was led by MLC Investment
s of Australia and SVB Capital and included several previous investors.[22]
Technology[edit]
In July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a rich document format similar to PDF b
uilt for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page.[23] iPa
per was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the same across differe
nt 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).[24] All major document types can be formatted into iPaper incl
uding Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOff
ice.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 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 required F
lash cookies to be enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[25]
On May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that they would be converting the entire site t
o HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.[26] TechCrunch reported that
Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief tech
nology officer Jared Friedman tells me: 'We are scrapping three years of Flash d
evelopment and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramat
ically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web p
age.'"[27] In July 2010 Publishers Weekly wrote a cover story on Scribd entitled
"Betting the House on HTML5."[28]
Scribd has its own API to integrate external/third-party applications.[29]
Since 2010, Scribd has been available on mobile phones and e-readers, in additio
n to personal computers. As of December 2013, Scribd is available through the ap
p store on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, the Kindle Fire, and the Noo
k.
Reception[edit]
Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and magazines, including The New Y
ork Times, Fast Company, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.[30] In 2013, the c
ompany was dubbed the "Netflix for ebooks"[9] by Wired, and is a known pioneer o
f the "all-you-can-read" model for ebooks.[31]
According to Scribd, more than 80 million readers from over 100 countries use th
e site on a monthly basis. Their library includes more than 100,000 subscription
books from 900+ publishers, and over 40 million documents and books have been u
ploaded to the site. Scribd readers have access to books by famous authors like
Kurt Vonnegut, Paolo Coelho, and Meg Cabot.
Notable users of Scribd include Virginia senator Mark Warner,[32] 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, United Nations Econ
omic Commission for Europe, The World Bank, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard,
Samsung and the Hasmonean High School Living Torah.
Accusations of copyright infringement[edit]
Scribd has often been accused of copyright infringement. In March 2009, Scribd l
aunched a "copyright management system" and has made upgrades to its system incl
uding the reported addition of OCR. The New York Times reported in May 2009 that
Scribd was hosting pirated works by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, J.K. Row
ling, and Stephen King.[33]
In September 2009, American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly
profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors."[34] Her atto
rneys Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara sought class action status in their efforts to
win damages from Scribd for allegedly "egregious copyright infringement."[35][36
] On May 11, 2009, Motoko Rich, writing in the New York Times, reported on Scrib
d's hosting of pirated works. Sibley Camara filed a class action lawsuit against
Scribd, accusing it of calculated copyright infringement for profit.[37] The su
it was dropped in July 2010.[38][39]
In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was served with 25 Digital Millenn
ium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.[40] The total number of DMCA notices
that have been served to the company is unknown, but, on 8 January 2013, a singl
e author Steven Saylor notified Scribd of 17 unauthorized uploads of his copyrig
hted work.[41]