Cumene 

(isopropylbenzene) is an organic compound that contains a benzene ring with

an isopropyl substitution. It is a constituent of crude oil and refined fuels. It is a flammable
colorless liquid that has a boiling point of 152 °C. Nearly all the cumene that is produced as a
pure compound on an industrial scale is converted to cumene hydroperoxide, which is an
intermediate in the synthesis of other industrially important chemicals,
primarily phenol and acetone (known as the cumene process).

ompany was founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, and
headquartered in San Francisco, California.[citation needed] Scribd's e-book subscription service is
available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and
personal computers. Subscribers can access unlimited books a month[6] from 1,000 publishers,
including Bloomsbury, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely
Planet, Macmillan, Perseus Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Workman.[7][8]
Scribd has 80 million users, and has been referred to as "the Netflix for books".[9][10][11]

Contents

 1History

o 1.1Founding (2007–2013)

o 1.2Subscription service (2013–present)

o 1.3Audiobooks

o 1.4Comics

 2Timeline

 3Financials

 4Technology

 5Reception

o 5.1Accusations of copyright infringement

o 5.2Controversies

o 5.3BookID

 6Supported file formats

 7See also

 8References

 9External links

History[edit]
Previous logo

Founding (2007–2013)[edit]
Scribd began as a site to host and share documents.[10] While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired
to start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers.
[12]
 His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his medical research
published.[12] Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content online.
[13]
 He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y
Combinator in the summer of 2006.[14] There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 in seed funding
and then launched in a San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[5]
Scribd was called "the YouTube for documents", allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using
its document reader.[12] The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents,
and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds.
[15]
 In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008.[16] It also
ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.[16]
In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital
copies of their work online.[17] That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell
e-books on Scribd.[18] The deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on
Scribd, including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary
Higgins Clark.[19]
In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including The New
York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch,
and MediaBistro.[15] ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December
2009.[20] In August 2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including
the California Proposition 8 ruling, which received over 100,000 views in about 24 minutes,
and HP's lawsuit against Mark Hurd's move to Oracle.[21][22]

Subscription service (2013–present)[edit]

Screenshots of Scribd's subscription service

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books. This
gave users unlimited access to Scribd's library of digital books for a flat monthly fee.[9] The
company also announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of
HarperCollins' catalog available on the subscription service.[23] According to Chantal Restivo-
Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has
released such a large portion of its catalog.[24] In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal
with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's entire library on its subscription service.[25]
In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon &
Schuster.[26] These titles included works from authors such as: Ray Bradbury, Doris Kearns
Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman, and David
McCullough.[27] Scribd has been criticized for advertising a free 14 day trial for which payment is
required before readers can trial the products. Readers discover this when they attempt to
download material.
Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in
February 2015.[3][28]
In February 2016, it was announced that only titles from a rotating selection of the library would
be available for unlimited reading, and subscribers would have credits to read three books and
one audiobook per month from the entire library with unused credits rolling over to the next
month.[29]