Scribd

Scribd, Inc.

Type of business Private

English, French,
German, Indonesian,
Available in Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian, Russian,
Spanish
March 2007; 15 years
Founded
ago
San Francisco,
Headquarters
California, U.S.
Trip Adler
Founder(s) Jared Friedman
Tikhon Bernstam
Trip Adler
(co-founder and CEO)
Jared Friedman
Key people
(co-founder and CTO)
Tikhon Bernstam
(co-founder and COO)
 Social reading and
Services
publishing platform
Subsidiaries SlideShare
URL www.scribd.com
Scribd Inc. /ˈskrɪbd/ is an American e-book
and audiobook subscription service that
includes one million titles.[1][2][3][4] Scribd
hosts 60 million documents on its open
publishing platform.[5]
The company 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
1 History
1.1 Founding (2007–2013)
1.2 Subscription service (2013–present)
1.3 Audiobooks
1.4 Comics
2 Timeline
3 Financials
4 Technology
5 Reception
5.1 Accusations of copyright
infringement
5.2 Controversies
5.3 BookID
6 Supported file formats
7 See also
8 References
9 External links
History
Founding (2007–2013)
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)
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]
The reporting system was discontinued on
February 6, 2018, in favor of a system of
"constantly rotating catalogs of ebooks and
audiobooks" that provided "an unlimited
number of books and audiobooks, alongside
unlimited access to news, magazines,
documents, and sheet music"[30] for a
monthly subscription fee of US$8.99.[31]
However, under this unlimited service,
Scribd would occasionally "limit the titles
that you’re able to access within a specific
content library in a 30-day period."[32]
In October 2018, Scribd announced a joint
subscription to Scribd and The New York
Times for $12.99 per month.
Audiobooks
In November 2014, Scribd added
audiobooks to its subscription library.[33]
Wired noted that this was the first
subscription service to offer unlimited
access to audiobooks, and "it represents a
much larger shift in the way digital content
is consumed over the net."[34] In April 2015,
the company expanded its audiobook
catalog in a deal with Penguin Random
House.[35] This added 9,000 audiobooks to
its platform including titles from authors
like Lena Dunham, John Grisham, Gillian
Flynn, and George R.R. Martin.[36]
Comics
In February 2015, Scribd introduced comics
to its subscription service.[37] The company
added 10,000 comics and graphic novels
from publishers including Marvel, Archie,
Boom! Studios, Dynamite, IDW, and
Valiant.[28] These included series such as
Guardians of the Galaxy, Daredevil, X-O
Manowar, and The Avengers.[38][39]
However, in December 2016, comics were
eliminated from the service due to low
demand.
Timeline
In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first
mobile plans for e-readers and smartphones.
[40] In April 2010 Scribd launched a new
feature called "Readcast",[41] which allows
automatic sharing of documents on
Facebook and Twitter.[42] Also in April
2010, Scribd announced its integration of
Facebook social plug-ins at the Facebook f8
Developer Conference.[43]
Scribd rolled out a redesign on September
13, 2010, to become, according to
TechCrunch, "the social network for
reading".[44]
In October 2013, Scribd launched its e-book
subscription service, allowing readers to
pay a flat monthly fee in exchange for
unlimited access to all of Scribd's book
titles.[45]
In August 2020, Scribd announced its
acquisition of the LinkedIn-owned
SlideShare for an undisclosed amount. [46]
Financials
The company was initially funded with
US$120,000 from Y Combinator in 2006,
and received over US$3.7 million in June
2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The
Kinsey Hills Group.[47] 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.
[48] David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO
and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined
Scribd's board of directors in January 2010.
[49]
In January 2011, Scribd raised an additional
US$13 million in a round led by MLC
Investments of Australia and SVB Capital.
[50] In January 2015, the company raised
US$22 million in new funding from Khosla
Ventures with partner Keith Rabois joining
the Scribd board of directors.[51]
In 2019, Scribd raised $58 million in new
funding led by growth firm Spectrum
Equity. [52]
Technology
In July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a
rich document format similar to PDF and
built for the web, which allows users to
embed documents into a web page.[53]
iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, allowing
it to be viewed the same across different
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).[54] All major document types can
be formatted into iPaper including Word
docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs,
OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.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 viewer is
also embeddable in any website or blog,
making it simple to embed documents in
their original layout regardless of file
format. Scribd iPaper required Flash
cookies to be enabled, which is the default
setting in Flash.[55]
On May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that
they would be converting the entire site to
HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San
Francisco.[56] TechCrunch reported that
Scribd is migrating away from Flash to
HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief
technology officer 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.'"[57][58]
Scribd has its own API to integrate
external/third-party applications,[59] but is
no longer offering new API accounts.[60]
Since 2010, Scribd has been available on
mobile phones and e-readers, in addition to
personal computers. As of December 2013,
Scribd became available on app stores and
various mobile devices.[citation needed]
Reception
Accusations of copyright
infringement
Scribd has been accused of copyright
infringement. In 2007, one year after its
inception, Scribd was served with 25 Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
takedown notices.[61] In March 2009, The
Guardian writes, "Harry Potter author [J.K.
Rowling] is among writers shocked to
discover their books available as free
downloads. Neil Blair, Rowling’s lawyer,
said the Harry Potter downloads were
'unauthorised and unlawful'...Rowling's
novels aren't the only ones to be available
from Scribd. A quick search throws up
novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan,
Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Philippa
Gregory, and J.R.R. Tolkien."[62] In
September 2009, American author Elaine
Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly
profits from the stolen copyrighted works of
innumerable authors".[63] Her attorneys
sought class action status in their efforts to
win damages from Scribd for allegedly
"egregious copyright infringement" and
accused it of calculated copyright
infringement for profit.[64][65][66] The suit
was dropped in July 2010.[67][68]
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.[69][70][71]
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 Sony's DMCA
request.[72]
Following a decision of the Istanbul 12th
Criminal Court of Peace, dated March 8,
2013, access to Scribd is blocked for
Internet users in Turkey.[73]
In July 2014, Scribd was sued by Disability
Rights Advocates (represented by Haben
Girma), on behalf of the National
Federation of the Blind and a blind Vermont
resident, for allegedly failing to provide
access to blind readers, in violation of the
Americans with Disability Act.[74] Scribd
moved to dismiss, arguing that the ADA
only applied to physical locations. In March
2015, the U.S. District Court of Vermont
ruled that the ADA covered online
 businesses as well. A settlement agreement
was reached, with Scribd agreeing to
provide content accessible to blind readers
by the end of 2017.[75]
BookID
To counteract the uploading of unauthorized
content, Scribd created BookID, an
automated copyright protection system that
helps authors and publishers identify
unauthorized use of their works on Scribd.
[76] This technology works by analyzing
documents for semantic data, metadata,
images, and other elements and creates an
encoded "fingerprint" of the copyrighted
work.[77]
Supported file formats
Supported formats include:[78]
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx,
.ppsx)
• Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
• OpenDocument (.odt, .odp, .ods, .odf, .odg)
• OpenOffice.org XML (.sxw, .sxi, .sxc, .sxd)
• Plain text (.txt)
• Portable Document Format (.pdf)
• PostScript (.ps)
• Rich text format (.rtf)
• Tagged image file format (.tif, .tiff)
See also
• Slideshare
• Amazon Lending Library and Kindle
Unlimited
• Document collaboration
• Oyster (company)
• Wayback Machine
• Webcite
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External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Scribd.
• Official website