Scribd

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Scribd, Inc.
Scribd new logo.png
Type of business Private
Available in English, Spanish, Portuguese
Founded March 2007; 11 years ago
Headquarters San Francisco, California, US
Key people Trip Adler
(co-founder and CEO)
Jared Friedman
(co-founder and CTO)
Tikhon Bernstam
(co-founder and COO)
Services Social reading and publishing platform
Website Scribd.com
Alexa rank Negative increase 222 (August 2018)[1]
Current status Active
Scribd /'skr?bd/ is a digital library, e-book and audiobook subscription service
that includes one million titles.[2][3][4][5] Scribd hosts 60 million documents on
its open publishing platform.[6]

Founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, and
headquartered in San Francisco, California, the company is backed by Khosla
Ventures, Y Combinator, Charles River Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.[7] 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 three books a month[8] from 1,000 publishers, including Bloomsbury,
Harlequin, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely Planet, Macmillan,
Perseus Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Workman.[9][10]

Scribd has 80 million users, and has been referred to as "the Netflix for books".
[11][12][13]

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.[12] While at Harvard, Trip
Adler was inspired to start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process
required to publish academic papers.[14] His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told
it would take 18 months to have his medical research published.[14] Adler wanted to
create a simple way to publish and share written content online.[15] He co-founded
Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the
summer of 2006.[16] There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 in seed funding and
then launched in a San Francisco apartment in March 2007.[6]

Scribd was called "the YouTube for documents", allowing anyone to self-publish on
the site using its document reader.[14] The document reader turns PDFs, Word
documents, and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website
that allows embeds.[17] In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million
visitors as of November 2008.[18] It also ranked as one of the top 20 social media
sites according to Comscore.[18]

In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload
and sell digital copies of their work online.[19] That same month, the site
partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell e-books on Scribd.[20] 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.[21]

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.[17] ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses
on Scribd in December 2009.[22] 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.[23][24]

Subscription service (2013�present)

Screenshots of Scribd's subscription service

In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for
e-books.[11] This gave users unlimited access to Scribd's library of digital books
for a flat monthly fee.[11] The company also announced a partnership with
HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins' catalog available on
the subscription service.[25] 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.[26] In March 2014, Scribd announced a
deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's entire library on its
subscription service.[27]

In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles
from Simon & Schuster.[28] These titles included works from authors such as: Ray
Bradbury, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King,
Chuck Klosterman, and David McCullough.[29]

Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic
books in February 2015.[4][30]

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;
unused credits roll over to the next month.[31]

Scribd�s unlimited service launched on February 6, 2018, and includes access to an

unlimited number of books and audiobooks, alongside unlimited access to news,
magazines, documents, and sheet music,[32] for a monthly subscription fee of
US$8.99.[33] However, under this unlimited service, Scribd will "occasionally [...]
limit the titles that [members are] able to access within a specific content
library in a 30-day period."[34] The previous credit system for books and
audiobooks were removed.[32]

Audiobooks
In November 2014, Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription library.[35] 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."[36] In April 2015, the company expanded its audiobook
catalog in a deal with Penguin Random House.[37] This added 9,000 audiobooks to its
platform including titles from authors like Lena Dunham, John Grisham, Gillian
Flynn, and George R.R. Martin.[38]

Comics
In February 2015, Scribd introduced comics to its subscription service.[39] The
company added 10,000 comics and graphic novels from publishers including Marvel,
Archie, Boom! Studios, Dynamite, IDW, and Valiant.[30] These included series such
as Guardians of the Galaxy, Daredevil, X-O Manowar, and The Avengers.[40][41]
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.[42] In April 2010 Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast",[43]
which allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and Twitter.[44] Also in
April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the
Facebook f8 Developer Conference.[45]

Scribd rolled out a redesign on September 13, 2010 to become, according to

TechCrunch, "the social network for reading".[46]

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.[47]

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.[48][7] 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.[49] David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO and founder
of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribd's board of directors in January 2010.[50]

In January 2011, Scribd raised an additional US$13 million in a round led by MLC
Investments of Australia and SVB Capital.[51] 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.[52]

Technology
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.[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 is available through the various
app stores on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire
and Nook tablets.

Reception
Scribd has been praised by several newspapers and magazines, including The New York
Times, Fast Company, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.[61] The company has been
dubbed the "Netflix for e-books"[11] by Wired, and is a known pioneer of the "all-
you-can-read" model for e-books.[13] Its founders, Trip Adler and Jared Friedman,
have been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and Inc. 35 Under 35.[62][14]

In April 2015, Los Angeles favorably reviewed Scribd's subscription service by

saying, "Subscribing to Scribd is sort of like shopping at Trader Joes: you may not
find every product you want, but it sure as hell is convenient, inexpensive, and
downright delectable."[63] Scribd has grown to more than 100 million users in 75
countries who use the site on a monthly basis.[64] As of June 2015, the Scribd app
has been downloaded 5.7 million times on Android and 3.3 million times on iOS.[65]

Accusations of copyright infringement

Scribd has been accused of copyright infringement. In September 2009, American
author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen
copyrighted works of innumerable authors".[66] 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.[67][68][69] The suit was dropped in July 2010.[70][71]

In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was served with 25 Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.[72]

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
JRR Tolkien."[73]

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.
[74][75][76]

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.[77]

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.[78]

In July 2014, Scribd was sued by Disability Rights Advocates, 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.[79] 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.
[80]

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.[81] This proprietary technology works by
analyzing documents for semantic data, meta data, images, and other elements and
creates an encoded "fingerprint" of the copyrighted work.[82] BookID is available
for free for authors and publishers whether or not they choose to make their
content available through the Scribd platform.[83]

Supported file formats

Supported formats include:[84]

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
Amazon Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited
Document collaboration
Oyster (company)
Wayback Machine
Webcite
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External links
Media related to Scribd at Wikimedia Commons

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