

Loopt, Justin.tv, Xobni and Scribd in Top 50 Tech startups of 2009 - sharpshoot
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/06/0615_50_startups_need_to_know/index.htm

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zacharypinter
Could somebody please explain to me the value that Scribd provides? Google
already indexes PDF's, and Scribd just seems to get in the way of me reaching
the content I want.

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justin
Scribd let's people who don't know how to put their pdf, word doc, powerpoint,
etc online and make it look good put it online and make it look good. And it's
easy. Who else does that?

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axod
The most popular content on scribd is actually stupid text files, and images.
(Check the most popular by views, all time).

Yes. Text, and images, wrapped up and 'streamed' to a flash player. Call me
crazy, but I think that's bad for the web. Those text files and images should
be free to roam. Not caged up in a horrible flash player. Add to that their
aggressive google SEO, and it's a bad bad situation.

experts-exchange.com has 1.5m entries in google.com whilst scribd.com has 16m
!!!

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justin
Not all documents that contain text can easily be turned into HTML documents
that preserve the original formatting and are readable. That is certainly true
for the vast majority of people outside the readers of Hacker News. Actually,
it's probably true for many of the people who _do_ read Hacker News. Scribd
clearly serves a purpose here. If you don't like the presentation (Flash),
then don't go to Scribd links off of Google. In fact, you could probably write
yourself a Greasemonkey plugin that removes Scribd results from your Google
results in 10 minutes!

Edit: Alternatively, there's probably another startup in here that does
exactly what Scribd does but instead of using Flash just uses HTML and CSS.
Then you'd have the best of both worlds, in theory, if it matters that much to
the user.

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drusenko
Google Apps does an awesome job at displaying PDFs in pure HTML without using
flash. Not sure how they do it, but it's pretty awesome.

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johnnybgoode
I would probably trust a random HNer's Top 50 list over BusinessWeek's.

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mattmaroon
Yeah, especially because it wouldn't have RockYou on it.

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Elepsis
I hope there is a very hot place in hell for whomever came up with the idea of
"slideshows" for web content.

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murderofcrows
wow: some awesome companies I haven't heard of here - livescribe, sermo, modu,
Nila

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knightinblue
Ning has been singlehandedly ruined for me by the mylocator.com guy. Thanks to
him, it just screams 'SPAM!' everytimg I hear anything about it.

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mattmaroon
There are at least 3 companies on there (none from YC) that have raised tens
of millions and appear to be swirling down the drain.

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paraschopra
which are they?

