

The Scribd Story and the Trip Method - marketer
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15777171/How-to-Come-up-with-Good-Ideas-for-Startups-the-Scribd-Story-and-the-Trip-Method

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geeko
I must say I haven't hated something with such great passion as I hate scribd
and similar services. The only reason why I still end up on scribd.com is
because some idiotic friend is not able to link the direct source for the
document in question.

I absolutely don't get it how such a service adds value to the web. It's great
for scribd to have 60 million readers. I am one of them. Why? Because I'm
freaking forced to sign up to download a pdf.

"A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by
democratizing the publishing process for everyday people". - Sounds great.
Could you please provide the link?

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jgrahamc
I hear you brother, I hear you. It's odd how some things you can just ignore
(MySpace in my case) without any bad feeling, but other things (scribd, for
example) are a royal pain in the ass.

I hate scribd because it's not a PDF. I'm still not sure what was wrong with
PDFs in the first place, but replacing them with an in browser, Flash based
thing is insane.

Oh, and as for selling ebooks on the web. What's wrong with Lulu? That's where
I can sell a PDF of my GNU Make book and offer people the option of buying a
printed copy.

BTW Can someone post a PDF of this?

~~~
zandorg
Lulu can be very expensive.

XLibris is a good alternative which is quite cheap in bulk.

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anigbrowl
Better than most 'how to be successful in 10 easy steps' presentations. The
most impressive aspect was listing early failed ideas and what was learned
from them.

I'm still not sure I see the point of Scribd, because I had no problem reading
PDFs and the like on originating sites before it came along, but hey. Also, we
desperately need a new namespace. I am so sick of cutesy homonyms. It's like
that phase a few years ago where all edgy books/movies/ articles had a title
of the form 'Verbing the Noun'.

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pierrefar
I love how more Buzzword Compliant their slides got from Slide 9 to Slide 13
as they refined Scribd.

It started with _A way for academics to publish online more easily_ and ended
up with _A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by
democratizing the publishing process for everyday people_.

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jgrahamc
Be wary of anyone who names something after themselves. I thought it was
"trip" as in "journey", but no it's "trip" as in "me".

~~~
natrius
I usually interpret such overt egotism as sarcasm. I hope I'm right at least
_most_ of the time.

~~~
trip
Yes there was sarcasm in calling it that. If you had heard the presentation
you would have gotten the joke.

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jgrahamc
"A social publishing company that aims to liberate the written word by
democratizing the publishing process for everyday people".

This reminds me of that old Tom Lehrer joke about how the problem with folk
music is that it was written by common people. If it had been written by
professional musicians it would have been good. There are a lot of crap
writers out there, giving them a platform doesn't improve anything. Not even
for them. If you're a crap writer and can't get your work published you always
have the mental salve that the publishers are against you. Once you can upload
your crap to scribd you'll discover that it wasn't the publishers after all,
it was that you suck. Which is better?

Writing is not easy and barriers to entry (such as editors or agents) actually
help filter out a ton of crap.

The assumption that publishing should be democratic is ludicrous as the only
books published in a democratic world would be pap that panders to the
unwashed masses.

~~~
wallflower
> Writing is not easy and barriers to entry...help filter out a ton of crap

For the aspiring writers out there, the _best_ essay on writing I've ever
read:

<http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm>

"Magazines, editors, agents - they all employ young people making $22,000 a
year whose job is to read lots of manuscripts and send back letters telling
you that you aren't good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. It's their job. Don't
pre-reject yourself."

I've bought random books off Lulu. Most of them are average, as in you could
probably write as well, given knowledge of the subject matter. Some of the
Lulu books were travel accounts, chock full of navel-gazing type
introspection. I think I bought those simply to read about what their trip did
for them.

~~~
colinprince
The URL is:

<http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm>

~~~
wallflower
Thanks. I wish there was copy and paste already on the iPhone.

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aristus
This is kind of content-free and contradictory. "Just because you have an idea
doesn't mean it's a good idea" vs "bounce ideas off of smart people" vs "Trust
your instincts and dont' worry about others' opinions".

Also "Trip method unit"? "Ideation"? That quality/time graph? Is this a joke?

~~~
eande
Is this a joke? No, it is not. As a slide show only it might be hard to see
the point. But having listen to the speech and knowing how Trip approaches
problems, thinks through it and emerges with new ideas it makes a lot of
sense. There is a reason why he is very successful.

~~~
bob111
and that reason is google spamming more textual data (mostly copyrighted) than
any site (including wikipedia) on the web

~~~
pierrefar
Surely that makes it Google's problem than his? If Google thinks this is spam
and it's still sending his site lots of traffic, then he can't be blamed for
that, no?

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ALee
Here's a pic from the event. Trip is so much younger than the other
panelists...

<http://www.founderinstitute.com/posts/50>

