Scribd has a lot of features. Most of them are pretty apparent, but we want to point out a few that you might have overlooked:
• Our embeddable PDF player. Scribd documents can easily be
embedded in other webpages, such as your blog or Myspace profile. Just copy and paste the embed code on the right side of each document. • High quality conversions. We convert among a variety of different formats really well, and you are welcome to use our services to convert your docs. • Audio downloads. We have a very high quality text-to-speech converter and the play button icon below “download as” let’s you download the audio version as an mp3. This means you can use Scribd to convert a book to a format you can listen to on your iPod. • Related documents. Also in that right bar is a list of related documents that we determine using fancy text similarity algorithms. This list is a fun way to browse Scribd, and you can also find people who have published documents similar to your own. • Traffic analytics. This is definitely one of the most popular features on Scribd and people seem to spend hours playing with it. There are a lot of different things you can do, so be sure to sample them all. • Text statistics. This is a very cool feature that often gets overlooked. Below the traffic analytics, you can see things like how big the words are that you use. • Print(fu). If you order a printed copy of someone’s work, the author gets emailed a dollar! Support the author AND get very high quality printings. • Favorites. This link at the bottom of every document lets you save a document in your “favorites” so you can come back and find it later. It is also a good way to tell the author you like his work and to notify your friends that you favorited something. This feature is very useful and we recommend you give it a try.
We have an endless list of features we want to add. We will mention just
three of them for now: • Recommendations. We hope to use artificial intelligence to recommend documents to you based on what you like. So if you’re a poetry person, we can select for you the highest quality poems to read. If you like funny political jokes, we’ll direct you right to what you are looking for. • Bulk uploads. This feature should be out very soon. This will allow you to upload a bunch of files at once. So if you have hundreds of Word and PDF files sitting on your computer that no one has seen in a while, you can upload them in a few minutes and share them with the world. • Groups. This will allow you to publish and discuss in smaller groups with people you know or have similar interests. Scribd already has a pretty big community and it’s about time that we make it a bit more manageable.
That’s all we’re going to say about features for now. If you have any questions about this or suggestions for features, please get in touch using feedback@scribd.com or just email Trip at tripadler@post.harvard.edu.
