
Scribd quietly growing like crazy (and profitable) - tikhon
http://tikhon.weebly.com/
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pooriaazimi
I don't use (or happen to use, through search or other means) Scribd much, but
whenever I do, I get frustrated as hell by the way it loads content and
usually end up closing that tab in disgust. I admit, I haven't tested it much
and might be completely wrong, but sometimes I open a 600 page manual or
something like that, and I'm on page 285 (bevause google determined thats
where my keyword was) and nothing happens. I wait a minute and then scroll to
top and see it's gradually populating from the very first page onwards, and it
would take 5-10 minutes before it reaches page 285 that I'm interested in... I
don't have Fladh installed and naturally use the HTML5 version; maybe Flash
version is smarter in the way it loads content.

It's absolutely great on small documents though, a great service.

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drats
I disagree, it's a horrible service. I have a powerful up to date ICS android
phone and their website totally denied me access to a document the other day
due to incompatibility and crapness. Just give me the pdf, or even the ppt, I
don't care, I don't need a middle man.

If people can't host those files there needs to be services to do that, i.e.
Scribd needs to be killed by dropbox/google drive like services with a
"public" folder or documents, not some intermediary. There is no reason for
this crappy service to exist and every time I encounter it I am literally
swearing under my breath it generates so much frustration in me. I can't wait
for them to go out of business and for the employees and founders to do
something productive with their lives.

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pi18n
I'm with you. Scribd offers absolutely nothing other than an obstacle in
between me and what I want to read.

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durbin
I think tikhon is starting to make hacker news and YC Companies look bad. The
poster of this link is the founder of scribd and a YC alum. If you look at his
last submission on Parse you'll see this isn't the first time. We don't come
to HN to be spammed with subtle marketing for YC Companies. We will start to
go somewhere else.

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nkurz
I've never been able to understand the legality of Scribd. Apart from the
reputability of YC and the focus on written documents, what makes them
different from other file sharing sites?

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truncate
The only way scribd can be used illegally is by uploading pirated ebooks. I
maybe wrong but I think the amount of illegal content is very less there, and
they try to filter them out. However other file sharing website, like
rapidshare or megaupload had almost every pirated stuff you can think of.

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nfg
I have to say my experience is the opposite - it's incredible the range of
"pirated" books on scribd, plenty that just aren't torrentable outside of
private trackers etc.

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truncate
You must be right then. I'm not much of a scribd user. Legal troubles many
times comes as surprise and I might be wrong again here, but usually
music/movie industry are quicker when it comes to filing suits against
websites.

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btb
Interesting, I've noticed that alot of sites I read started using them as
well. I dont know why, because IMO its a giant step backwards compared to
pdf's, at least you can always search and copy-paste relevant sections from
those. Not so on a few documents I've encountered on scribd.

As an example: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/91764042/April-2012-TEF-Commentary>
When I try to copy-paste some text from that document it comes out gibberish.
And I cant search in it either.

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nchlswu
I have the same problem. I got the impression the pasted obfuscation was on
purpose and a feature to help them sell their product.

I never verified this; am I wrong?

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chaqke
It seems that some people are shocked that potentially copyrighted material is
available..

..and others are shocked that the same content is not conveniently copyable.

Go figure.

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blutonium
Scribd is great and all, but a quantcast screenshot doesn't show it's
profitable or represent their growth in anyway.

Anything else to add?

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earl
How does the quantcast measurement not measure growth? Note it goes up _and_
to the right...???

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mbreese
I think they mean that it doesn't show anything about revenue growth or
profitability. When we talk about a company growing, you usually think of
either revenues growing, or the head-count growing.

What the quantcast measurement does show is the _usage_ of Scribd is growing.
And congrats to them on that!

~~~
pasbesoin
I think the gp had tongue firmly in cheek.

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kenrikm
Congrats to the scribd team. It's refreshing to see a post about being
profitable rather then just how much was raised.

Lots of love for scribd here.

~~~
mibbitier
After 5 years, and $25 investment, I would have thought profitability is the
absolute low bar of what should be happening.

~~~
rprasad
I think you're expecting to much for twentiy five dollars.

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mibbitier
$25 is plenty to buy a domain name and start a website!

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rdl
Ever since you moved to HTML5 viewer, I've loved Scribd.

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repsilat
What does it provide over browsers' built-in pdf viewers? Is it mostly good
for the distributors of pdfs, or is it good for people viewing as well?

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rplacd
A feature that plain PDFs don't have - the conspicuous lack of an ability to
save documents without going through a paywall.

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RJaswa
This is an interesting graph. It looks like the mid-point of 2011 to the mid-
point of 2012 was ~80mm visitors (2011) to ~90mm (2012) which constitutes
12.5% YoY growth. The largest delta between some 30-day interval in the last
year and this latest 30-day interval seems to be ~30mm visitors (~90mm -
~60mm) which is still only 50% annualized growth.

I find Scribd to be a very valuable service but this chart makes me wonder if
monetization rate is growing more quickly than visitation. If not, perhaps the
monetization potential of content publishing is lower than with other kinds of
user-generated content.

Great that it's profitable, though, gives the team indefinite time to figure
it out, or identify an acquirer who values it strategically.

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hamilton
Interesting seasonal trend. Must be more than just students, though.

