Scribd quietly growing like crazy (and profitable) | Hacker News Reader

Scribd quietly growing like crazy (and profitable)

tikhon.weebly.com

59 pointstikhon30 comments

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.

(Just a note to good Scribd founders that seem to be viewing this thread: my rant above, which arguably might not have been suitable for HN, has 16 upvotes right now. So it seems that others experience this little problem too, and are frustrated by it. So, you might want to consider fixing this issue. Thanks, best of luck)

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

File-sharing sites aren't illegal either.

I was tried to phrase my question so as to side-step that issue. While there is nothing inherently illegal about a file sharing site, many of them host content that is in violation of copyright laws.

My question (genuine) was whether there was anything different about Scribd that has kept them free of legal hassles. My outside impression is that they are just as legal/illegal as Megaupload, RapidShare, 4Shared, but are lower profile because they host don't host music or video.

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.

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?

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.

I've noticed increasing use -- on sites focused on revenue. E.g. web page version of "traditional" press publications, who now link to Scribd instead of directly to a PDF.

I don't have an analysis nor experience for an informed comment, but it seems to me that Scribd use is all about attempting to gain some revenue from the content.

A year or two ago, I had to help someone with their Joomla site (personal obligation). Many formerly freely accessible references that were cited in older comments online, I now found "locked up" in Scribd. One/some of the core authors of this documentation appeared to have made a concerted effort to remove the "plain web" versions and relocate them into Scribd.

Fine. Their content. But if you're asking what Scribd is about, that's my impression.

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?

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

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!

I think the gp had tongue firmly in cheek.

The poster is the founder of scribd doing subversive marketing for his company. Guessing that is how he knows they are profitable.

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.

thanks kenrik!

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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