Scribd

Scribd /skrbd/ is a digital library, featuring an ebook In October 2013, Scribd ocially launched the rst unand audiobook subscription service that includes New limited access subscription service for digital books, ofYork Times Best-Sellers and classics.
ten called the "Netix for ebooks,[10] giving readers un[11]
Launched in 2007 by Trip Adler and Jared Friedman, limited access to Scribd library. The company also announced a partnership with major publishing company
and headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Scribd also
[2]
features written works contributed by users around the HarperCollins. The ocial statement revealed that the
world. Backed by Y Combinator, Charles River Ven- majority of the HarperCollins US and HarperCollins
tures, and Redpoint Ventures, Scribd serves more than 80 Christian catalogs will be available in Scribds subscripmillion active readers coming to the site every month.[2] tion service. Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital ocer
at HarperCollins, explained to the media that the deal repScribds subscription service is available on Android, resents the rst time that the publisher has released such
iOS, and Windows Phone smartphones and tablets, as a large portion of its catalog.[12]
well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and personal computers
for a fee which lets readers have unlimited access to more As of December 2013, Adler is the CEO of Scribd, where
than 500,000 books from over 900 publishers, including he is responsible for the product and strategic direction of
Best
Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, RosettaBooks, and the company. Adler was named in BusinessWeek's
[13]
Young
Tech
Entrepreneurs
2010
list.
[3]
Workman. In November 2014, audiobooks were added
without an additional fee to the subscription.[4]
In January 2015, the company raised $22 million in new
funding from Khosla Ventures with partner Keith Rabois
joining the Scribd board of directors.[14]

History
2 Timeline

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 diculties of publishing
academic papers. He teamed up with co-founders Jared
Friedman and Tikhon Bernstamm and they attended Y
Combinator in Cambridge in the summer of 2006.[5]
Scribd was launched from a San Francisco apartment
in March 2007 and quickly grew in trac. In 2008, it
ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[6] In June 2009, Scribd launched Scribd
Store[7] and shortly thereafter closed a deal with Simon
& Schuster to sell ebooks on Scribd.[8] Over 900 publishers, including HarperCollins, Harvard University Press,
Houghton Miin Harcourt, Wiley, Pearson, Random
House, RosettaBooks, Stanford University Press, and
Workman, are now associated with Scribd. ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009.

In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its rst mobile plans

for e-readers and smartphones.[15] In April 2010 Scribd
launched a new feature called Readcast,[16] which allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and
Twitter.[17] Also in April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the Facebook f8
Developer Conference.[18]
Scribd rolled out a redesign on September 13, 2010 to
become, according to TechCrunch, the social network
for reading.[19]
In October 2013, Scribd launched its ebook subscription service, allowing readers to pay a at monthly fee
in exchange for unlimited access to all of Scribds book
titles.[20]

3 Financials

In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader

for media companies with The New York Times, Los
Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Hungton Post,
TechCrunch, and MediaBistro.[9] 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 overturned Prop 8 and HPs
lawsuit against Mark Hurds move to Oracle Corporation.

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
Group.[21][22] 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 Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group, and hired as president
1

5 RECEPTION

George Consagra, former Bebo COO and managing director of Organic Inc.[23] 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 Scribds board of directors in
January 2010. In January 2011, Scribd raised its largest
round, bringing in an additional $13M. The latest round
was led by MLC Investments of Australia and SVB Capital and included several previous investors.[24]

Technology

5 Reception
Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Fast Company,
Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.[32] In 2013, the company was dubbed the Netix for ebooks[10] by Wired,
and is a known pioneer of the all-you-can-read model
for ebooks.[33]
According to Scribd, more than 80 million readers from
over 100 countries use the 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 uploaded 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,[34] former 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,
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, The
World Bank, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard,
Samsung and the Hasmonean High School Living Torah.

In July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a rich document

format similar to PDF built for the web, which allows
users to embed documents into a web page.[25] iPaper
was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the
same across dierent operating systems (Windows, Mac
OS, and Linux) without conversion, as long as the reader
has Flash installed (although Scribd has announced nonFlash support for the iPhone).[26] All major document
types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs,
PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOce.org XML documents, and PostScript
les.
5.1 Accusations of copyright infringement
All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows
published documents to either be private or open to the Scribd has often been accused of copyright infringement.
larger Scribd community. The iPaper document viewer is In March 2009, Scribd launched a copyright managealso embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple ment system and has made upgrades to its system includto embed documents in their original layout regardless of ing the reported addition of OCR. The New York Times
le format. Scribd iPaper required Flash cookies to be reported in May 2009 that Scribd was hosting pirated
enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.[27]
works by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, J.K. RowlOn May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that they would be
converting the entire site to HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.[28] TechCrunch reported that
Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. Scribd
co-founder and chief technology ocer 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.'"[29] In July 2010 Publishers Weekly wrote
a cover story on Scribd entitled Betting the House on
HTML5.[30]

ing, and Stephen King.[35]

In September 2009, American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd shamelessly prots from the stolen
copyrighted works of innumerable authors.[36] Her attorneys Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara sought class action status in their eorts to win damages from Scribd
for allegedly egregious copyright infringement.[37][38]
On May 11, 2009, Motoko Rich, writing in the New
York Times, reported on Scribds hosting of pirated
works. Sibley Camara led a class action lawsuit against
Scribd, accusing it of calculated copyright infringement
for prot.[39] The suit was dropped in July 2010.[40][41]

Scribd has its own API to integrate external/third-party In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was served
applications.[31]
with 25 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takeSince 2010, Scribd has been available on mobile phones down notices.[42] The total number of DMCA notices
and e-readers, in addition to personal computers. As of that have been served to the company is unknown, but,
December 2013, Scribd is available through the various on 8 January 2013, a single author Steven Saylor notiapp stores on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, ed Scribd of 17 unauthorized uploads of his copyrighted
work.[43]
as well as the Kindle Fire and Nook tablets.

5.2

Controversies

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.[44][45][46]
In July 2010, GigaOM reported that the script of The Social Network (2010) movie was uploaded and leaked on
Scribd; it was promptly taken down per Sonys DMCA
request.[47]
Following a decision of the Istanbul 12th Criminal Court
of Peace, dated 8 March 2013, access to Scribd is blocked
for Internet users in Turkey.[48]

Supported le formats

Supported formats include:[49]

Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx, .ppsx)
Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
OpenDocument (.odt, .odp, .ods, .odf, .odg)
OpenOce.org XML (.sxw, .sxi, .sxc, .sxd)
Plain text (.txt)
Portable Document Format (.pdf)
PostScript (.ps)
Rich text format (.rtf)
Tagged image le format (.tif, .ti)

See also
Document collaboration
Wayback Machine
Webcite

References

[1] Scribd.com Site Info. Alexa Internet. Retrieved 201412-02.

[2] Julie Bosman (October 1, 2013). HarperCollins Joins
Scribd in E-Book Subscription Plan. Retrieved December 8, 2013.
[3] Holmes, David (2013-11-18). What does achieving a big
milestone get you at Scribd? An equally big oce perk..
Pando.com. Retrieved 2013-12-30.

[4] Scribd adds unlimited audiobooks to its $8.99 subscription ebook service
[5] Scribd. Crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
[6] Scribd had a blowout year and so did the web document.
[7] Brad Stone (17 May 2009). Site Lets Writers Sell Digital
Copies. The New York Times. Retrieved 11 October
2010.
[8] Brad Stone (11 July 2009). Simon & Schuster to Sell
Digital Books on Scribd.com. The New York Times.
Retrieved 11 October 2010.
[9] From The Desk Of Your News Outlet And Scribd.
Reuters. 2009-10-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
[10] Metz, Cade. Scribd Challenges Amazon and Apple With
'Netix for Books". Wired. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
[11] Scribd Launches First Global, Multi-Platform Digital
Book Subscription Service (Press release). Scribd.
2013-10-01. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
[12] Anthony Ha (1 October 2013). With HarperCollins
Deal, Scribd Unveils Its Bid To Become The Netix For
Books. TechCrunch. AOL Inc. Retrieved 1 October
2013.
[13] Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010. Business Week.
Retrieved 2010.
[14] http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/02/
scribd-khosla-funding/
[15] Fowler, Georey A. (2010-02-10). Scribd Plans Mobile
Application. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2010-02-10.
[16] Scribd gets 'Readcasting': Autosharing made easy.
CNet. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
[17] Scribd launches readcast. Marketwire. Retrieved 201004-15.
[18] Scribds bet on the Facebook Eect. CNN. 2010-04-21.
Retrieved 2010-04-21.
[19] Scribd Redesign Is An Attempt To Become A Social
Network For Reading"". TechCrunch. Retrieved 201009-13.
[20] Carr, Austin (2013-10-01). Scribd, HarperCollins
Launch $8.99 Subscription Book Service. Fast Company. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
[21] Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint.
[22] Scribd CrunchBase Company Prole.
[23] Scribd raises $9 million, hires new president for social
publishing.
[24] Scribd Raises $13 Million To Support Mobile Moves,
Product Expansion. paidContent.org. 19 Jan 2011. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
[25] iPaper: a Simple Way to View and Share Documents on
the Web. Wired. 2008-02-20. Retrieved 2014-08-28.

[26] Scribd on your iPhone.

[27] Global Storage Settings panel. Macromedia.com. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
[28] HTML5 and The Future of Publishing. Web 2.0 Expo.
Retrieved 2010-05-06.
[29] Erick Schonfeld (May 5, 2010). Scribd CTO: We Are
Scrapping Flash And Betting The Company On HTML5.
Retrieved October 11, 2010.
[30] Betting the House on HTML 5. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2010-07-26.
[31] Scribd SAP Largest API Integration Press Release.
Scribd. 2009-03-10. Retrieved 22 September 2010.
[32] Press. Scribd. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
[33] Schnuer, Jenna (2013-11-08). We Test It: Scribds AllYou-Can Read Digital Buet. Entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 2013-12-31.
[34] Mark Warner. scribd.com. 29 March 2009. Retrieved
1 January 2010.
[35] Motoko Rich (2009-05-11). Print Books Are Target of
Pirates on the Web. The New York Times. Retrieved
2009-05-11.
[36] Johnson, Bobbie (2009-09-21). Book sharing site Scribd
rejects claims of copyright infringement. The Guardian
(London).
[37] Greg Sandoval (September 19, 2009). Jammie Thomas
lawyers le suit against Scribd. Retrieved October 11,
2010.
[38] Motoko Rich (2009-09-19). Jammie Thomas lawyers
le suit against Scribd. CNET News.com. Retrieved
2009-09-19.
[39] Class Action Copyright Suit Filed Against Scribd... By
Jammie Thomas Lawyers?". TechDirt. 2009-09-21. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
[40] Lawsuit Saying Scribds Copyright-Protection Filters
Infringe On Copyrights Has Been Dumped. Scribd.
TechDirt. 19 July 2010. Retrieved 24 September 2010.
[41] Kravets, David (2010-07-19).
Lawsuit Dropped;
Claimed That Copyright-Filtering Violates Copyright.
Wired. Retrieved 2013-02-21.
[42] Scribd looks like a winner. Scribd. TechCrunch. 29
March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[43] Steven Saylor (8 January 2013). Archive Page. Steven
Saylor. Steven Saylor. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
[44] Stone, Brad (29 March 2009). passwords of comcast
customers exposed. nytimes.com. Retrieved 1 January
2010.
[45] Comcast passwords leaked onto the web. cnet.com. 29
March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
[46] Comcast passwords exposed. hothardware.com. 29
March 2009. Retrieved 1 January 2010.

EXTERNAL LINKS

[47] Gannes, Liz. Leaked Facebook Movie Script Paints

Zuckerberg as Vindictive and Naive. Gigaom.
[48] Freedom on the Net Turkey 2013. Freedom House.
Retrieved October 3, 2013.
[49] Jason (February 26, 2009). Info, FAQs, and Forums/FAQ: Writing, Uploading and Managing Documents. Retrieved October 11, 2010.

9 External links
Ocial website
Video: 'YouTube' for writers

10
10.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Scribd Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribd?oldid=641902682 Contributors: Jimbo Wales, Mjb, Lfh, Dale Arnett, Psychonaut,
HaeB, Alan Liefting, Yama, Edcolins, Beland, Billposer, Halo, Tastiles, Mike Rosoft, ArnoldReinhold, YUL89YYZ, Spoon!, Mike
Schwartz, R. S. Shaw, Gary, Geo Swan, Apoc2400, Fritzpoll, DreamGuy, Josh Parris, Rjwilmsi, Nightscream, Ground Zero, Bgwhite,
Adoniscik, ErkDemon, Thnidu, 3en, SmackBot, InverseHypercube, Rojomoke, Mcld, Chris the speller, Thumperward, Snori, Timneu22,
Gyrobo, BullRangifer, DMacks, Lambiam, Attys, Gobonobo, CartesianAngst, Meco, Ric, WilliamJE, Agent007bond, Cydebot, Dougweller, Scarpy, Andosmith, Jm3, Mack2, WWB, Deective, MER-C, Ph.eyes, Gavia immer, Mathematrucker, Froid, Andrewnpeters,
Kxmsf, Rob Burbidge, Leecolinharvey, Ineedspeed2007, Philip Trueman, Perohanych, Metaed, Rcasati, Urbanrenewal, Falcon8765,
Agentq314, RISCfuture, Colfer2, OKBot, Fuddle, Motyka, ClueBot, SummerWithMorons, Fadesga, Frmorrison, Aidar24, StigBot, Ottawahitech, Trivialist, 718 Bot, LeoFrank, Alexbot, Alejandrocaro35, Thesupermat, DumZiBoT, Badmachine, Paulmnguyen, Feministo,
Tinyrock, Sgpsaros, Addbot, Aakash.goenka, Melab-1, Prairieplant, Zorrobot, Balabiot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, TaBOT-zerem, AnomieBOT,
, DSisyphBot, Almabot, Novonium, ChrisSquire99, Slipslide, Ute in DC, LimeHat, Batmandk, Masrudin, FrescoBot, Anna Roy,
Ajnnadeau, MarB4, LittleWink, Stoelsz, Michael herr, Full-date unlinking bot, Treyharris1, Sylye, 3dh3m, Lotje, Coercorash, Dskrvk,
Reach Out to the Truth, RjwilmsiBot, SimonRM, VernoWhitney, QuipQuotch, GoingBatty, Ida Shaw, KuduIO, Cappert, Theyann PentaGram, AndyAgr, L Kensington, Philafrenzy, Donner60, MainFrame, AndyTheGrump, Rudymoman, EdoBot, ClueBot NG, Goalloverhere,
JimDustyRhodes, BG19bot, Wikiedit555, Pbeltranl, Mananshah15, Proxyma, Soulparadox, Vecto Rerso, Rezonansowy, Mogism, Manojranaweera, Youngblood20, Tslancaster, Tubeyak, Ekips39, Mreasons, Bluelight999, Ugog Nizdast, Xrt6L, Bjorn.wastvedt, Prasidpathak1,
JaconaFrere, BeccaCory, Wesalius, Madmike111, Usmanaslam30, Zaixar, Ayeletshacar and Anonymous: 99

10.2

Images

File:Ambox_important.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Ambox_important.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Own work, based o of Image:Ambox scales.svg Original artist: Dsmurat (talk contribs)
File:Commons-logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: ? Contributors: ? Original
artist: ?
File:Edit-clear.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f2/Edit-clear.svg License: Public domain Contributors: The
Tango! Desktop Project. Original artist:
The people from the Tango! project. And according to the meta-data in the le, specically: Andreas Nilsson, and Jakub Steiner (although
minimally).
File:Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/48/Folder_Hexagonal_Icon.svg License: Cc-bysa-3.0 Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Increase_Negative.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Increase_Negative.svg License: Public domain Contributors:
Increase2.svg Original artist: Increase2.svg: Sarang
File:Scribd_logo.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Scribd_logo.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Scribd-Logo-Negative-black-Vector.svg
Original artist: Own work

10.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0