The Scribd Blog

The Next Chapter of Social Reading on Scribd

Watching videos, listening to music, even surfing the web are becoming increasingly social activities.  So why not reading? When you read a great book, magazine, or document, you naturally want to share it with friends and family, right?  That’s why Scribd has always been focused on enabling a social reading experience for our users, helping people discover content and connect with people who share similar reading interests.

Now we’re taking our efforts to the next level. The popularity of Scribd Readcast has made it clear that you enjoy sharing what you’re reading and publishing with your friends on Facebook. As part of our commitment to giving people the very best social reading experience, we’re providing new members of the Scribd community with:

Personalized Content Based on Friends’ Activity: New users will automatically be connected to their Facebook friends, and their homepage will be personalized to include content that friends are reading, sharing and commenting on on Scribd.

Smarter Reading Recommendations: New users will be offered relevant reading recommendations based on their public information on Facebook.

No Login Required: Who needs another username and password to remember?  We’re using new users’ public information on Facebook to jump start profiles so that new users can start publishing and commenting right away.  No sign-up form necessary!

Starting today, when new readers visit Scribd they will notice a prominent message at the top of all of our pages, to notify them that we’re personalizing their Scribd experience and give them an easy way to learn more or turn off the experience.

Even before today’s announcement, the majority of people signing up to Scribd are choosing to manually connect their Scribd profiles to Facebook, so we’re thrilled to be able to provide a social and personalized experience to more of our readers.

-Deema, Director of Product Marketing (recently read “Totally Tubular 80’s Toys”)

2 comments September 27, 2010

The Scribd Archive, an Apology and Immediate Changes

A few weeks ago, we launched a program called the Scribd Archive, which we hoped would encourage readers to contribute to the Scribd community. They could do this by uploading their own documents in order to download older documents in the Archive or pay a small fee. This in no way restricted the ability to read and share content on Scribd.

I believe the intention was good, but we made some mistakes that we need to acknowledge and fix. We didn’t communicate the program clearly to you, our content publishers, and we didn’t give you enough control over when/if you wanted your content in The Archive. So first, I’d like to sincerely apologize to the community of users who publish content on Scribd. You are the ones who power the site, which would not exist without your contributions.

We’re certainly not perfect, but in our effort to be better, we will be making several important changes:

• Clear opt-out — anyone uploading to the site will be informed about The Archive and can easily opt-out of the program here; we will also post clear information about The Archive on your “My Docs” profile page.

• Proactive messaging — you’ll be notified when your documents are ready for the Archive and again given the opportunity to opt-out of the program; we will also prominently let readers know that if they want to download for free, they can simply join the community and upload a document.

• Community advisory board — we’ve established a Scribd User Advisory Board (SUAB) to help ensure that we incorporate community feedback on upcoming Scribd products.

Our goal is to bring readers and creators of content together using the inherent efficiencies of the Internet and other technologies. We’re constantly learning new ways to do this better. If you have questions/concerns about The Scribd Archive or other Scribd products, please email me directly at tripadler@scribd.com.

–Trip, CEO and Co-founder

12 comments September 21, 2010

The future of reading and publishing is social – Introducing new Scribd home and profile pages

Scribd’s goal has always been to create the web’s most dynamic reading experience, one that makes it easy to publish and discover written material online. Over the past few years, we’ve taken several major steps toward making written content more “social” – adding a feed, integrating with Facebook and Twitter, converting documents into pages that are easier to share through HTML5.

Today, we’re launching another major site flow re-design that makes it easier for people connect through common reading interests (e.g., college football history, comic books, scientific papers) by turning your Scribd reading feed into a personalized content recommendation engine. (Read FAQ for highlights.)

• Discover and join conversations instantly. Interact with content faster. Re-readcast directly from your Reading Activity feed and see who’s already readcast a book with our new readcast facepiles next to all documents.

• Books, magazines, documents remain central focus. Document thumbnails are larger and your feed is more targeted with your friends’ activity (publishing, commenting, readcasting) taking center stage.

• New “Shelf” Tab visually organizes reading and publishing events. Everyone now has a unique profile tab that presents their uploads, readcasts, collections, and purchases as “virtual shelves.”

For more background, below is a letter from Scribd’s co-founder and CEO, Trip Adler.

-Matt, Director of Product, recently read “Top Five Rivalries in College Football“

2 comments September 13, 2010

Introducing the Scribd Desktop Uploader

Today, Scribd is launching our new Desktop Uploader for Windows, a tool that makes uploading documents directly from your desktop easy.

Scribd publishers with Windows XP and above or Net 2.0 and above can install the Desktop Uploader here. (Mac users will find a link to Scribd’s traditional Mac Desktop Uploader on the same installation page.)

The following presentation walks you through the Uploader installation step-by-step and shows you how to use its coolest features.

Add comment September 3, 2010

Shedding Light on Scribd Archives

A few weeks ago, Scribd launched a beta test of a premium feature that allows people to download certain archived content for a fee. This does not restrict people’s ability to read the content in other ways, such as on their computers and mobile devices. The vast majority of people choose to read using Scribd’s (free) HTML5 reading experience.

We launched the archive feature because, in order for us to continue building free products that content publishers and readers love, we have to be able to pay for the servers that host the documents and the engineers to maintain the site (plus everything else that keeps a company running).

All this being said, this program seems to have caused some confusion, so please allow me to clarify a few things:

We value tremendously the authors and others who contribute to the Scribd community. We would never purposefully do anything that would jeopardize our good standing with you. That’s why this program gives you, the contributors, the ability to remove all your content from the Scribd Archive.

Based on recent feedback and to avoid further confusion, we’re now making this opt-out option even easier; to immediately and permanently remove all your content from the archive, go into the “settings” page in your profile and check the box under “The Scribd Archive.” To prevent your documents from ever being included in the Scribd Archives, follow the steps outlined in our FAQ.

If you’re not familiar with Scribd, I encourage you to read the Scribd 101 series (or see one author’s story here about her Scribd experience). We may not execute flawlessly every time, but our goal, as always, is to build the best possible platform for content creators to connect with the broadest possible audience.

13 comments September 2, 2010

World Economic Forum Names Scribd Technology Pioneer 2011

Today, we are proud and humbled to announce that Scribd has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a 2011 Technology Pioneer Award winner. The Technology Pioneer Award is one of the highest honors that any tech company can receive, with recipients chosen based on their “potential for long-term impact on business and society, visionary leadership, long-standing market lead, and proven purpose.”

Scribd was honored for breaking down barriers to information with our HTML5 reading technology which makes important books, documents, and materials accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Scribd is home to many of the world’s leading businesses, think tanks, governments, media, and non-profit organizations.

Past Technology Pioneer Award winners include Google, Mozilla Corp., Twitter, AdMob, and PayPal. Profiles of this year’s Pioneer Award class are included in the official award brochure found on the World Economic Forum’s official Scribd profile. (Scribd is profiled on pg. 23.)

Scribd: Where the World Comes to Read

Scribd founders Trip Adler, CEO, and Jared Friedman, CTO, will be honored at the Annual Meeting of New Champions in Tianjin, China in September and at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland in January, 2011. Trip and Jared talk about technology innovation and the Technology Pioneer award in our new video.

3 comments September 1, 2010

How Scribd HTML5 Works … Even When It Shouldn’t

If you’ve been following Scribd’s transition to HTML5 and enjoy the techier side of life, don’t miss the latest Scribd Tech Blog Post that outlines how we make HTML5 work even on browsers where it shouldn’t.

1 comment August 27, 2010

Free Comic-Con Comics from Celebrity Creators on Scribd

Today marks the beginning of Comic-Con 2010 and to celebrate Scribd has partnered with Liquid Comics and HP to offer free comics from celebrity creators Ed Burns, Guy Ritchie, Deepak Chopra, and Grant Morrison.

Fans can browse the full Comic-Con Scribd collection here, read on the go using our send-to-device feature, or be among the lucky first 1,000 who will receive printed copies of the Burns, Ritchie, and Chopra comics from HP’s Magcloud here.

Add comment July 22, 2010

Handwritten Apology Note from Oakland New Year’s Day Shooting Released

Yesterday, Oakland BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed black man on New Year’s Day 2009. The tragedy and trial that followed grabbed national headlines, partly because of the disturbing videos of the shooting that bystanders captured on their cell phones.

While waiting for the jury to deliberate, Officer Mehserle penned the following handwritten note of apology  to the victim, Oscar Grant, and his family:

Add comment July 10, 2010

O’Reilly Radar calls Scribd’s Coding Blog a “genuinely interesting technology blog”

O’Reilly Radar showed Scribd some blog love earlier today when they described the new Scribd Coding Blog as “very interesting about the technology behind and inside Scribd. They process over 150M polygons a day, building web fonts from the fonts in PDF files, and tell you why it’s not straightforward. I wish there were more of these genuinely interesting technology blogs from companies that do interesting things.”

Visit our coding blog here: https://coding.scribd.com/

1 comment June 29, 2010