

Scribd Had A Blowout Year, And So Did the Web Document - trip
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/scribd-had-a-blowout-year-and-so-did-the-web-document/

======
hapless
I realize that someone, somewhere, is running webtv and would love a service
like Scribd. That person is not able to use it because it's a flash and
javascript nightmare.

The rest of us, who have regular PCs with the modern software that scribd
requires, have document readers for all of the various file formats. The very
worst of these readers is faster and more pleasant to use than the best scribd
rendering.

Lastly, as usual, TechCrunch measures success in terms of users and investor
capital. Ask yourself: Does it really make sense to measure the success of a
free hosting service in terms of unique users?

~~~
marketer
About the speed issue - how is a 20 MB reader (Adobe Reader 9) plus the cost
of downloading the entire pdf faster than a 200 kb swf file and having the
document streamed? That makes no sense.

~~~
axod
Half of the "documents" seem to be either plain text, or a plain image (porn).

The most viewed "document" on scribd of all time:
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/26896/SUING-FOR-TOO-MUCH-SEX>

Do you think it's sane to "stream" that document? What the hell are these
people thinking??? They're wrapping plain text inside flash. One can only
imagine their warped mentality. Why not convert plain text to a video, upload
it to youtube, and embed the video. It'd make about as much sense.

~~~
abstractbill
This is the modern version of people emailing each other Microsoft Word
documents with photos in them. I never understood that either.

~~~
graemep
That is because some corporate email systems block attached image files.

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axod
This is sad news. Just when you thought flash was dead for all but video, it's
now being used to show text.

~~~
marketer
Have you ever thought about using flash for your web chat service? I'd
actually prefer it over standard javascript, especially because it would have
a real socket connection.

Also, flash has pretty good support for text rendering. You can embed any font
into any swf file, and it has anti-aliasing and effects. There was a
presentation about the new flash 10 text features recently -
<http://is.gd/ejKj>

~~~
axod
From a user point of view, why do you care if it has a real socket connection,
or a emulated connection that does exactly the same thing? I'm not sure any
user anywhere would notice the difference. There is no noticable difference in
terms of latency, negligible difference in terms of bandwidth. I have thought
about the possibility of using it where available, but I don't think it'd
really be worth the effort and potential issues.

Fair enough for text rendering, but html is getting better font rendering
also. I know which I'd put my money on. I can't even select the damn text on
scribd.

~~~
abstractbill
The real place I could see Flash being great for mibbit is it would allow you
to build an embed that could be used on sites like Myspace which allow Flash
but not Javascript content.

Let me know if you ever want me to show you how to get a sane Flash dev
environment set up - I have the war-wounds from writing most of Justin.TV's
Flash code ;-)

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Make it a blog post of some sort? I'd read it.

~~~
lackbeard
I'd be interested in reading that as well.

------
startingup
I will be charitable here (you can tell I am not a huge fan either!). I have
seen a couple of people use the site, and they use it to publish short stories
and such. They could always post it to a blog, but I think Scribd gives them
nice search engine optimization. Even for this legitimate use case, the flash
player is a bit of a turn-off for me.

But the reason I am not a huge fan is the sheer extent of copyright abuse
going on there. Turning a blind eye to it - hiding behind DMCA really - is not
kosher, and I frankly wouldn't want to do business that way, no matter what
the profit.

~~~
captainobvious
Guess you are anti-ISP too?

~~~
startingup
Exactly the response I meant by "hiding behind the DMCA". To call Scribd an
ISP is a stretch. They pretty much _invite_ anyone to upload anything, and it
is not clear they take any step to take out copyrighted content ( _entire_
books can be found there) until someone sends a DMCA notice. An ISP is a
transmission service, while Scribd is a stateful, long lasting, very search-
engine optimized storage service. An ISP doesn't by _design intent_ (SEO!)
carry traffic to copyright infringing content. Some day a distinction like
that could come back and bite them in the ass, but their hope must be to
"exit" before that happens.

------
there
i wonder how many of those visits resulted in a comment on the referring page
complaining about scribd and asking for the actual pdf...

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zain
Man, you guys are harsh. Even if it isn't a service you yourself would use,
why bash a service useful for others? The first goal of many Y Combinator
startups is to make something people want, and Scribd clearly fits the bill if
millions of people are using it.

~~~
axod
I disagree.

ONE person decides to use scribd to show some text on techcrunch, and suddenly
the whole readership of techcrunch are "users" of scribd? Measuring success in
terms of pageviews in a passive widget isn't a good measure.

~~~
Mazy
I highly doubt comscore is claiming to be tracking embed/widget traffic. Those
numbers are supposed to be for the site itself.

They are quantified, and quantcast shows the vast majority of their traffic is
to their destination: <http://www.quantcast.com/scribd.com>

see scribd.com vs The Scribd Network

~~~
axod
True, so people are linking instead of embedding. But the point is the same...
If one person makes the decision to link to scribd instead of the pdf, and 100
people follow that link, it doesn't really mean 100 people value the service.

~~~
zain
The traffic isn't just from people following links. What about the people
uploading 50,000 documents every day _?

_ Source: Scribd says so, according to washingtonpost
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/12...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121900462.html)

~~~
axod
True, although I'd guess a fair amount is webmasters trying to cross promote
their content. Seems like if you own a porn site, you may as well post some
"tasters" to scribd with your web address on, etc etc

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snprbob86
Flash provides a PDF viewer component. I'd like to use it because I intend to
adorn documents on my pages with additional controls and interactions. I can't
inject my own UI and logic into your desktop PDF viewer.

Unfortunately, this Flash component only handles PDFs, not the wide spectrum
of document formats. If I could reliably convert Word docs, Excel
spreadsheets, etc. server side to PDF, then I would be a very happy boy.

Does anyone know of any such software that can do this? I doubt Scribd would
be the one to provide it, but I would really love a simple `anything2pdf` that
"just works": `cat foo.doc | anything2pdf > foo.pdf`

------
ajkirwin
Screw scribd. Give me something that converts pdfs into straight (x)html, and
I will be happy.

~~~
jawngee
> soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;"
> -nofirststartwizard

> java -jar jodconverter-cli-2.2.1 yourpdf.pdf yourpdf.html

Happy now?

------
justin
Fuck the haters. Scribd is awesome because it's a great utility for easily
sharing your shitty Word docs and PDFs, and there is obviously demand for it
as Scribd and all the Scribd-like knockoff sites each have more users than
your worthless websites. Complaining about Scribd putting text in Flash is
like complaining about how ugly Myspace pages are: while you were out
bitching, a few talented people were out giving the masses what they wanted,
no matter how many standards got violated, and will subsequently get paid for
it.

~~~
axod
If they get bought, I'll gladly eat my hat. If they become profitable by
sharing documents free, whilst expanding the documents size massively by
wrapping it in flash, I'll eat another hat.

~~~
unalone
So, wait. If they become profitable WITHOUT being bought, you still eat two
hats? Or are they entirely separate hat affairs?

